Sarah, somewhat of a professional student holds her Bachelor of Science in Nursing granted in the height of Covid-19 in October 2020. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts with a heavy emphasis in adult education and leisure studies alongside a Human Kinetics (coaching) focus granted to her in September of 2015. This degree honours the study of sociological, cultural and human phenomena against the backdrop of human kinetics while remaining mindful of the rigor and depth associated with the health science discipline. This degree culminates with a year long research project and extensive internship or community involvement in the community and once complete in 2015 Sarah moved up to North Bay to complete her Nursing Degree.

North Bay was an opportunity to escape the city for a while, experience healthy outdoor living, and for Sarah-for her to better inform who she was in the context as a modern settler. Providing healthcare for North Bay was a privilege on account for the exceptional and varied socioeconomic factors which make the region unique. Nestled between two lakes the city is vibrantly alive with blue collar workers-forestry, mining former military and healthcare.

Sarah’s bedside nursing career seems short but was exceptionally rich in specialty experience. She is formally trained as an in-patient nurse with a high degree of palliative experience on a facility with a designated “palliative wing”. From there Sarah moved back to the community to a Long Term Care facility for Memory Care and residents entering the palliative stage of their care until mid 2021.

In 2022, Sarah Moved back to Ottawa to work on an inpatient teaching unit at the Ottawa Hospital. This unit was a frequent Covid admission unit for West Ottawa and she, for the later part of 2022 she worked for a short time on radiation oncology units as well.

In 2019, one of the tools that Sarah added to her client centric approach to care for her clients was to, in partnership with her nursing association the RNAO and her nursing school, Nipissing University, begin to explore the importance of best practice guidelines on nursing education. To do so required becoming a Best Practice Champion of the Patient and Family Centered Care Best Practice Guideline specifically for this institution and her year advocating for its use in nursing education. This lens fundamentally shaped her outlook on client care and humanity going forward.

Sarah completed IAP’s Death Doula’s training as a part of her yearly Quality Assurance Program with the College of Nurses for the year 2024. She started Ottawa East End of Life Consulting knowing that in a world of increasingly scarce resources; in the interest of human and time constraints a supportive word, guidance and the promise of a little bit more stability in the most uncertain times in ones life can have the most profoundly healing impact.