Ingram School of Nursing (ISoN) PhD student Yi Wen (Jenny) Wang was ecstatic when she learned that the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation had selected her as a 2024-2027 Trudeau Scholar. “It took a while to sink in, but after meeting the other winners and our mentors in June at a networking event in Paris, I became very excited by this opportunity,” she says.
Ms. Wang’s passion for research was sparked during her first year in the BScN program, when she worked with Assistant Professor Argerie Tsimicalis, RN, PhD, on an arts-based project examining the moral experiences of children with OI. After earning her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř in 2019, Ms. Wang went on to complete a Master in Education. Her desire to continue working with Professor Tsimicalis and her interest in further exploring how art-making can improve children’s health, led her to return to the ISoN for her PhD studies in the fall of 2023. “My knowledge base is rooted in nursing principles and childhood ethics,” she says. “I’m still a nurse at heart.”
Trudeau Scholars are selected for their academic achievements as well as their willingness to embrace a plurality of perspectives. The foundation’s goal is to “cultivate leaders capable of transforming concepts into tangible solutions to the benefit of Canadian and international communities.” For the 2024-2027 cohort, 16 students were selected out of a total of 450 applicants from 40 universities in Canada and 60 universities worldwide.
The funding will support Ms. Wang’s PhD research which involves using arts-based methods to co-design an educational virtual reality software to teach children about their orthopaedic care and surgery. In keeping with her childhood ethics training and background in nursing and education, she will involve children with Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) in the design of the virtual reality software. OI is a genetic condition characterized by brittle bones that leads to frequent and painful fractures.
Art-making is a well-established health promotion tool commonly used to alleviate children’s pain and anxiety, support communication, and promote self-reflection and social interactions. As Ms. Wang notes, “Children don’t have the same vocabulary as adults. Art allows children of all ages to express their perspectives about their healthcare experiences as well as their needs so that we can offer better health care.”
The Trudeau scholarship also provides one-on-one mentoring, networking opportunities and a travel allowance to attend conferences. In addition to her own doctoral research, Ms. Wang is working on an international project using puppet theatre as a means of understanding children’s hospital experiences with OI, under the supervision of Principal Investigator Argerie Tsimicalis. “We will be creating a play in London, England that we hope to perform in Montreal and internationally,” she says. Ms. Wang was awarded the Mitacs Globalink research award to support her work abroad. The project is also supported by the UK-based charity Brittle Bone Society and Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř’s Centre for Research on Children and Families (CRCF).
This was a banner year for Ms. Wang, who also received a fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). She is grateful to the faculty at the Ingram School of Nursing for setting her on a rewarding career path and for guiding her along the way with both moral and practical support. She encourages students considering nursing to take risks and keep their options open. “There are so many opportunities in nursing – clinical, bedside nursing, research, policy making, teaching. The program here at Ŕ¦°óSMÉçÇř is really outstanding.”
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