Mary Jo Haddad CM is a Canadian nurse and health care executive. After spending 10 years as the President and CEO of The Hospital for Sick Children, Haddad became the first female Chancellor at the University of Windsor.
Haddad was the second oldest of a Lebanese family and grew up in Windsor, Ontario. [1] She attended St. Angela de Merici school [1] and F. J. Brennan Catholic High School. [2] Upon graduating from high school, she enrolled in a nursing diploma program at St. Clair College in 1974 despite her fathers disagreement. [3] After graduating St. Clair College in 1976, she was one of two students offered a job at the Children's Hospital of Michigan. She subsequently spent eight years in Detroit where she worked in the neonatal Intensive care unit. [2] During the eight years she spent in Michigan, Haddad earned a Bachelor of Nursing degree from the University of Windsor (UWindsor) [4] and started a private practice with Leeann Wiseman where she did home visits to families whose children had nearly died as infants. [5]
In 1984, Haddad was offered an assistant nurse manager position at The Hospital for Sick Children's neonatal intensive care unit. She moved to Toronto where she met her future husband Jim Forster at a house party thrown by mutual friends. [3] Haddad swiftly moved up the ranks at The Hospital for Sick Children and began nurse administrator in the hospital's pediatric intensive-care unit by 1990. She simultaneously completed graduate studies at the University of Toronto in health administration in 1998 and shortly thereafter became vice-president of child health services at Sick Kids. In August 2002, Haddad assumed the role of chief nurse executive and in June 2003 she became the executive Vice President and chief operating officer. [6] After Alan Gayer departed as the head of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children in 2004, she was named his acting president and CEO which eventually became permanent. [7] [6] In recognition of her health care leadership, Haddad was honoured by her alma mater, St. Clair College, with their Alumni of Distinction Award [8] and by UWindsor with an honorary doctor of laws degree. [9]
While serving as president and CEO of The Hospital for Sick Children, Haddad was the recipient of the Order of Canada for her advocacy work for children's health care. [10] [11] In 2011, she was named one of Canada's inaugural Top 25 Women of Influence in health sciences and inducted into the Canada's Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Hall of Fame. She had previously been received Canada's Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award, presented by the Women's Executive Network in 2007, 2008 and 2009. [12] Haddad stepped down from her position as president and CEO in December 2013 after 10 years in the position. [13]
Upon stepping down from The Hospital for Sick Children, Bob Harding funded the establishment of the Mary Jo Haddad Nursing Chair in Child Health Research at SickKids and her alma mater, UofT. [14] She later joined the Board of Directors of the Kids’Health Links Foundation, an Ontario-based charitable organization. She was founding Chair of Children First Canada, Director of TD Bank Group and Telus. [15] In the same year, Haddad received an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. [16] In 2019, Haddad became the first female Chancellor at the University of Windsor, replacing Ed Lumley. [1]
The University of Windsor is a public research university in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It is Canada's southernmost university. It has approximately 17,500 students. The university was incorporated by the provincial government in 1962 and has more than 150,000 alumni.
The Hospital for Sick Children (HSC), corporately branded as SickKids, is a major pediatric teaching hospital located on University Avenue in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto, the hospital was ranked the top pediatric hospital in the world by Newsweek in 2021.
St. Michael's Hospital is a teaching hospital and medical centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was established by the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1892 with the founding goal of taking care of the sick and the poor of Toronto's inner city. The hospital provides tertiary and quaternary services in cardiovascular surgery, neurosurgery, inner city health, and therapeutic endoscopy. It is one of two Level 1 adult trauma centres in Greater Toronto, along with the larger Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. As trauma centres, both St. Michael's and Sunnybrook are equipped with helipads. It is one of several teaching hospitals of the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and is part of the Unity Health Toronto hospital network.
The Niagara Health System, or Niagara Health (NH), is a Canadian multi-site hospital amalgamation, comprising five sites serving over 450,000 residents across the 12 municipalities making up the Regional Municipality of Niagara, Canada. Niagara Health is one of Ontario's largest hospital systems, with 4,800 employees, 600 physicians and 850 volunteers. As of 2019, its annual operating budget was approximately $550 million.
London Health Sciences Centre is a hospital network in London, Ontario and is collectively one of Canada's largest acute-care teaching hospitals. It was formed in 1995 as a result of the merger of University Hospital and Victoria Hospital. In affiliation with the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario, it trains more than 1,800 medical and care professionals annually. It operates two hospital facilities, University Hospital and Victoria Hospital which includes the Children's Hospital at London Health Sciences Centre.
Marilyn McHarg, is a humanitarian executive. She was President and CEO of Dignitas International, as well as a founding member and General Director of the Canadian section of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) / Doctors Without Borders, the world's leading independent medical humanitarian organization.
The word "nurse" originally came from the Latin word "nutrire", meaning to suckle, referring to a wet-nurse; only in the late 16th century did it attain its modern meaning of a person who cares for the infirm.
The Calvary Wakefield Hospital, formerly Private Hospital, Wakefield Street (PHWS) and variants, Wakefield Street Private Hospital, Wakefield Memorial Hospital and Wakefield Hospital, referred to informally as "the Wakefield", was a private hospital founded in 1883 or 1884 on Wakefield Street in Adelaide, South Australia. In 1935, the hospital occupied new, purpose-built premises on the corner of Wakefield and Hutt Streets. In 2006 it was acquired by Little Company of Mary Health Care Ltd., known as Calvary Health Care, a Roman Catholic not-for-profit organisation. In 2020 it was vacated, being replaced by a newly constructed facility, the Calvary Adelaide Hospital. The hospital provided acute care with inpatient and outpatient facilities, orthopaedic, and neurosurgical services to patients. It specialised in cardiac care, and was the only private 24/7 accident and emergency unit in the city. It employed 600 staff.
Nurses in Canada practise in a wide variety of settings, with various levels of training and experience. They provide evidence-based care and educate their patients about health and disease.
Mary Adelaide Nutting was a Canadian nurse, educator, and pioneer in the field of hospital care. After graduating from Johns Hopkins University's first nurse training program in 1891, Nutting helped to found a modern nursing program at the school. In 1907, she became involved in an experimental program at the new Teachers College at Columbia University. Ascending to the role of chair of the nursing and health department, Nutting authored a vanguard curriculum based on preparatory nursing education, public health studies, and social service emphasis. She served as president of a variety of councils and committees that served to standardize nursing education and ease the process of meshing nurse-profession interest with state legislation. Nutting was also the author of a multitude of scholarly works relating to the nursing field, and her work, A History of Nursing, remains an essential historic writing today. She is remembered for her legacy as a pioneer in the field of nursing, but also her activist role in a time where women still had limited rights.
Lois Ann Fairley, RN was a Canadian nurse, a patient care advocate, an Ontario labour leader, and a community service activist.
Mary Lee Mills was an American nurse. Born into a family of eleven children, she attended the Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing and graduated in a nursing degree and became a registered nurse. After working as a midwife, she joined the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) in 1946 and served as their chief nursing officer of Liberia, working to hold some of their first campaigns in public health education. Mills later worked in Lebanon and established the country's first nursing school, and helped to combat treatable diseases. She was later assigned to South Vietnam, Cambodia and Chad to provide medical education.
June Jolly was an English paediatric nurse and social worker who in the 1970s–80s transformed the care provided in British children's hospitals to a "family-centred" model.
Major Margaret Clothilde MacDonald, was a Canadian military nurse. She is well known for being one of the first women to hold a position in the completely male-dominated military of her time. She is also known for her breakthrough role as a military nurse during the First World War. During this time, she was given the title of Matron-in-Chief of the Canadian Army Medical Corps Nursing Service. MacDonald was the first woman promoted to the rank of major in the British Empire and was awarded the Royal Red Cross (1916) and the Florence Nightingale Medal (1918).
Frances Gillam Holden was an Australian nurse who later became the Lady Superintendent of the Hospital for Sick Children in Glebe, Sydney. Holden was also a prolific writer and wrote books, poems, and contributed to journal and newspaper articles with her publications focusing on topics such as nursing practices, physiology, and women's rights. Holden was also the co-founder of The Dawn Club, a women's suffrage group and made regular contributions to its magazine, The Dawn. For her contributions as a writer and as a women's rights supporter, Holden is regarded as a first-wave feminist.
Caroline Wellwood was a Canadian nurse, nursing educator, and Christian missionary in China.
Marita Gerianne Titler is an American nurse scholar. She is the Rhetaugh G. Dumas Endowed Chair in the University of Michigan's School of Nursing.
Rajkumari Amrit Kaur College of Nursing is a public funded institute administratively governed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. It is a constituent college of University of Delhi. The college ranked second in India for Nursing Education (2016).
There has been a nursing shortage in Canada for decades. This became more acute in the period between 1943 and 1952 as Canada's health services were expanding, and the number of hospital beds increased along with the number of hospitalizations. By the mid-1940s across Canada the shortage, estimated at 8,700, led to a re-organization and re-conceptualization of nursing in Canada, according to a 2020 journal article in BC Studies. The nature of nursing was changing with new and time-consuming responsibilities, such as the administration of penicillin. During that period, there was no unemployment for nurses, especially if they were willing to be mobile. However, working conditions for nurses were very poor, with low wages combined with long hours; nursing force retention was challenging. As well, since almost all nurses were women, they had responsibilities at home they had to manage. In response to the shortage of nurses, women who had trained as registered nurses (RNs) but had left the workforce when they married, were encouraged to return to work; volunteers were engaged; nursing courses were accelerated; and new categories of regulated nursing were added to registered nursing—"practical nurses" and "nursing assistants." At that time, a "utopia of nursing" referred to teams of nursing staff which included registered nurses and other regulated nursing and hospital worker support personnel. Some of these auxiliary positions were also open to First Nations women and other racialized groups.