Nursing Scholarship In and For the Northern Canadian Context

Abstract

The University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) School of Nursing is located at 540 north latitude, the southern edge of what is generally considered the Circumpolar North. UNBC was established in 1990 as a university in the North for the North. The UNBC School of Nursing has embraced this intent in all of its work. This paper describes the school’s approach to the creation and translation of meaningful faculty science and scholarship for this northern Canadian context. The unique needs and factors that characterize rural, remote, and northern communities preclude a strictly academy-based approach to the generation of research questions to be addressed and research methodologies to address them. Partnerships with communities, health care service providers, and agencies are essential to effective knowledge translation. Faculty members in the School of Nursing rely on such partnerships both in the education of students and for research. Synergistic partnerships, combined with a multidisciplinary approach, foster research on significant questions for practice, and support organizational change that addresses the health and service needs of northern populations. The school’s practice-driven, reality-based approach to nursing education incorporates this process of knowledge generation and translation in order to assist graduates in responding to the unique realities, health determinants, and needs of northern, rural, and remote Canadian populations. This report is part of a special collection from members of the University of the Arctic Thematic Network on Northern Nursing Education. The collection explores models of decentralized and distributed university-level nursing education across the Circumpolar North.