Trinity Western University is pleased to announce the appointment of Sonya Grypma, RN, Ph.D., as the Dean of the School of Nursing, effective May 16, 2013.
Grypma joined the School of Nursing from the University of Lethbridge six years ago, having just completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of British Columbia. A leading scholar in the history of nursing and global health, Grypma has gained an international reputation for her work on missionary nursing in China, through her groundbreaking book “Healing Henan: Canadian Nurses at the North China Mission, 1888–1947”; and subsequent “China Interrupted: Japanese Internment and the Reshaping of a Canadian Missionary Community.”
Last year, the School of Nursing hosted the International Symposium on Faith and Nursing, inviting nurses and caregivers from various practice and academic settings to discuss the interface between religion, spirituality, nursing and healthcare ethics. “As a Christian University, we have a lot of experience integrating faith and nursing,” said Grypma. “That’s something unique among Canadian universities.”
“Based on responses from that symposium, nurses in Canada and around the world are looking to TWU to provide leadership in understanding how faith and nursing come together,” she said. “We’ve had graduate students come to TWU from a variety of backgrounds. We tell them, ‘this is a place where you can be open—let’s figure out together what it means for you to be a Muslim, or a Christian, or a Sikh nurse and a graduate student.’ The response we hear is a sense of relief that they have found a place where they can grapple with how faith, values, and professional practice intersect.”
In a rapidly changing and increasingly complex health care system, Canadian nursing education involves anticipating what the nursing profession will require by the time students graduate.
“It’s a question of how to prepare nurses to be adaptable, to be calm and confident in the chaos that is the healthcare system right now,” she said. From the feedback the School receives from colleagues in clinical practice, TWU seems to be doing just that. “They tell us our graduates don’t rattle easily,” said Grypma. “They say, ‘we don’t know exactly what you’re doing but you’re doing something that develops these graduates with a rootedness and stability in their practice. They have a sense of vocation—a sense that they are doing something of value and that nursing is meaningful work.’”
Along with TWU’s liberal arts core curriculum, undergraduate nursing students develop a broad view of the world and their place in it. “Their disposition comes from the language that’s used from the very first day of class,” she explained. “It conveys not only the opportunity in nursing to respond to the deepest needs of humans but also to collectively prevent, alleviate and help find meaning in suffering.”
As Dean, Grypma will teach a reduced schedule and continue her research program focused on transnational nursing history. She brings with her a strong foundation to explore what it means to be a nurse in the 21st Century. “We have a 400-year history of nursing in Canada,” she said, “profoundly influenced by religious groups such as the Grey Nuns. While faith and nursing may feel unfamiliar in this current generation of nursing, it’s not a strange idea in the whole of history.”
Acknowledging the foundational work of previous Nursing administrators Dr. Julia Emblen, Dr. Barb Pesut and Dr. Landa Terblanche, Grypma would like to honour what the University and the School have already accomplished. “I think these women have helped develop an extraordinary nursing program, and it carries that reputation. My work will be to protect what is already so good about the program, while building on existing strengths to reach even further.”
Since the first nursing class graduated in 1997, TWU Nursing graduates have earned a reputation locally, provincially and internationally for excellence in practice. Each year, 250 students apply for 50 seats in the undergraduate program. The Masters of Nursing program, established in 2008 under the directorship of Sheryl Reimer-Kirkham, Ph.D., and with an intake of 20 students a year, has already earned a strong reputation.