New professor emeritus attributes career success to her rural roots and supportive family
Asked about her favourite go-to way to relax, retired Faculty of Nursing professor, Dr. Chris Way, is unabashed in her response.
“I love berry picking,” said Dr. Way, who was name professor emeritus during the morning session of Convocation last Thursday. “I enjoy getting out there with nature, you have one sole focus and that is to find the berry you are hunting.”
She’s taking a break from sifting through the reams of papers and files collected over 30 plus years as a professor and researcher in Nursing.
You can see why Dr. Way might prefer thinking about favourite berry picking grounds.
A School of Nursing (SON) graduate from the Class of 1975, Dr. Way also went on to complete a BA in political science from Memorial University while working at the Salvation Army Grace General Hospital in psychiatric nursing, and labour and delivery.
“I had such broad interests, I just wanted to do so much,” she said.
She was also taking courses in business administration because her family thought she might return to Newtown, Bonavista Bay, to work at Beothic Fisheries, the family business started by her grandfather Kenneth Way.
Though she returns home to visit her mom in Newtown every month, Dr. Way never did pursue a job in the family business but credits her parents and grandparents for the successful career she’s enjoyed.
“I was grandparents’ and parents pride and joy and they were my audience. They would allow me to dress up, and one day I could be a nurse, the next a doctor, whatever I wanted to be,” she said, thinking back to her childhood and the home she and her parents shared with her grandparents.
“My grandparents believed that with the right supports you could be whoever you wanted to be.”
“My grandparents believed that with the right supports you could be whoever you wanted to be.”
Dr. Way enrolled in a Master of Science in Nursing degree at McGill University and worked in Montreal before joining the SON as a faculty member in 1980.
She tapped into her rural Newfoundland roots and honed her interest in community health when completing a PhD at the University of Virginia, setting her dissertation in St. Mary’s Bay and focusing on the impact of the cod moratorium.
“The fisheries had just closed so I was trying to capture the resulting environmental impact,” said Dr. Way. “I wanted to know what the people thought, and I did all kinds of papers, interviewed all kinds of people, the people who delivered health care, and people who lived in the community. I wanted to know how they thought we could improve the health care system.”
She discovered that research was her strength and channeled her interest in health promotion, disease prevention, and community well-being into all her future projects.
Cross-appointed with the Faculty of Medicine, she got involved in big projects about health care restructuring and reform, dialysis care, and the genetics of conditions such as Lynch Syndrome, all the while bringing a nursing perspective and role to the research.
“I always made sure there was a role for nursing, and I really enjoyed working with my (graduate) students. They’d take pieces of the research and everyone was trying to do something meaningful.”
Her advice to new Nursing graduates?
You can have all the knowledge and skills you want, but if you don’t interact (with your patient), to figure out who they are, then you’ve missed the boat.
“I don’t have all the answers but what I have chosen to do is put the other person first,” she said. “You can have all the knowledge and skills you want, but if you don’t interact (with your patient), to figure out who they are, then you’ve missed the boat.
Drawing on her sea-faring roots, she says,
“You’ve got to be on board when the ship is going and that is my best message.”