As part of its 75th anniversary celebrations, Queen’s School of Nursing will welcome to campus a group of North American leaders in the field of nursing for the Conference of the Americas this week.

Hosted by the Queen’s Joanna Briggs Collaboration (QJBC), the conference will focus on enhancing techniques and improving methodology in the field of nursing. This is the first time the conference has been held in Canada.

“Bringing all the North American centres to Queen’s is a unique opportunity for discussion,” says Christina Godfrey (School of Nursing), QJBC Scientific Director and Senior Methodologist. “We are going to talk about how we, as nurses, can improve our field and the work we do. It will also be a chance to network and set the stage for the building of strong communities around the world.”

QJBC was founded in 2004 as the first Canadian Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) centre. The JBI is an international not-for-profit, research and development centre based at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. There are now 70 JBI centres around the world.

Dr. Godfrey leads and mentors the seven centres located in Canada, five in the United States, and one in Brazil, all of which form the American region. The seven centres in Canada bring together both universities and hospitals with a common goal of improving the quality and reliability of practice, and ultimately, health outcomes, by enabling the use of best available evidence on patient safety and health-care quality.

The Canadian centres are located at Memorial University, Dalhousie University, the University of New Brunswick, St. Elizabeth Care (Ontario), Covenant Health (Alberta), the University of Victoria, and Queen’s as the lead institution.

The event runs from Wednesday, Sept. 28 to Saturday, Oct. 1 at the Delta Kingston Waterfront Hotel, and will feature daily keynote speakers, a full slate of workshops, concurrent sessions for research, and a Friday afternoon debate.

For more information, visit the Conference of the Americas website.