Profile of Patricia Morris

Award Received: Vanier Graduate Scholarship

Awarded for the project: “Understanding the impacts of non-consensual nursing care on clients with cognitive impairments living in long-term care facilities in New Brunswick”

Faculty: Arts

Graduate Academic Unit: Interdisciplinary Studies

Project supervised by: Rose McCloskey, PhD

My doctoral research will focus on interactions between long-term care nurses and residents with dementia who routinely decline necessary personal hygiene care. This is incredibly fraught for resident and nurse, and it brings up questions of power, vulnerability, agency, and capacity that require more concentrated attention. My research will pay particular attention to residents’ experiences from a trauma-informed perspective.

I am a Registered Nurse with a passion for geriatrics. Previous to this, I achieved a Master of Arts degree from Trent University (2012), where I conducted ethnographic fieldwork about trans women’s experiences of exclusion from a music festival in Hart, Michigan. I went on to pursue a Bachelor (2014) and Master of Nursing (2020) and I have worked in long-term dementia care since 2014. These two paths—gender theory and geriatric nursing—may seem quite different, but I see a common theme! Across all of this work, I have focused on experiences of exclusion and marginalization. I firmly believe that research can drive emancipatory change, and I hope that my doctoral work will contribute to positive changes in the provision of elder care in New Brunswick.