Nursing welcomes two new faculty members

Fall is always a busy time in academia with new students joining the university, but also new faculty members as well. This September, the Faculty of Nursing welcomed 30 new academics, including 26 nursing instructors in temporary or longer term contracts. 

Meet two of our newest faculty:

Instructor Kimberly Shapkin claims she has hit almost every post-secondary institution in western Canada and now adds the University of Calgary to the list. After receiving a diploma at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, she obtained her BScN at the University of Victoria, a MSN in Advanced Practice at the University of British Columbia and her post masters through the University of Alberta in 2007.

She taught at Douglas College in New Westminster before spending time in Kansas City where she worked on the No One Dies Alone initiative, a program that trains volunteers to be with patients in their final days.

In addition to her new role teaching in the NP program, Shapkin is a member of the seniors health team at AHS, specifically Integrated Supportive and Facilitated Living where she focuses on palliative and end-of-life care. She is excited to be joining the nursing academic team and helping to educate future NPs. 

“I want to raise the profile of the nurse practitioner and am a real advocate for that NP role in Canada’s health care system," she says.

New assistant professor Gudrun Reay (BN’98, PhD’14) has been an ER nurse in Calgary since 1987. She is a graduate of the University of Calgary’s post-diploma BN program and originally began her MN in 2009 with the intent of becoming an NP. 

“I found I really liked the academic environment,” says Reay now. “I was bridged into the doctoral program and here I am.”   

Reay has stuck with her passion for emergency nursing, focusing her PhD research on how emergency triage nurses make decisions. Her ongoing research area will be around decision-making in complex environments such as critical care and ER nursing.

She also looks forward to sharing her emergency nursing knowledge with her undergrad students. Earlier this month, she was a panelist at the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame’s Discovery Days which introduces high school students to opportunities in the health sciences.