Dr. Sheila Blackstock, Academic Leadership with the NCCIH
Dr. Sheila Blackstock
Dr. Sheila Blackstock is a Gitxsan nursing scholar and Associate Professor in the Nursing Faculty at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC). She has over 32 years of nursing experience ranging from acute care to rural health, Indigenous and occupational health nursing.
Dr. Blackstock has developed and delivered an interdisciplinary indigenous health course and an Indigenous nursing practice course for Thompson Rivers University. She is a Board of Director for the First Nations Health Authority, and the inaugural Indigenous faculty representative on the board of the Canadian Nurses Association. She was appointed by the Minister of Health to the provincial In Plain Sight task force where she is working to change health care legislation, and to enact cultural safety and humility for Indigenous Peoples at points of care.
Her research and scholarship focus on using a decolonizing approach to improving Indigenous holistic health and the empowerment of nurses, and nurse leaders to improve the quality of nursing practice work environments. She uses an organizational context to explore the role of oppression embedded within organizational workplace structures, processes, policies. The effects of oppression on nursing leadership, new graduate nurses, students are linked to the creation of fertile work environments where experiences of incivility and bullying are more apt to occur. The findings of her research arm health care administrators with the information to change organizational structures, processes, and policies to improve the quality of nursing practice environments for nursing leaders and nurses.
(Photo credit: Michele Yong, Manager, Communications content Thompson Rivers University)