A StFX Rankin School of Nursing professor has been recognized for her exemplary efforts to advance Nova Scotia Health’s vision, mission, values, and strategic directions.
Dr. Britney Benoit received the Early Career/Emerging Researcher Award during the recent Nova Scotia Health Making Waves Awards program. The annual awards recognize exemplary efforts to advance the strategic directions of Nova Scotia Health and to help improve health care across the province.
“I was really grateful. It felt really rewarding to be recognized for my work,” says Dr. Benoit who was nominated and recognized in the award’s Research and Innovation category. “As a registered nurse, an academic and an affiliated health scientist, the goal is always to impact the health and wellness of patients and families in the area I work in. This helps affirm I’m doing good work to help impact best care practices.”
Dr. Benoit, who doesn’t know the identity of her nominator, says she is grateful for that honour alone, of someone putting her name forward. “It was so wonderful to know your work has been making a difference and that someone believes in the value of your work.”
The majority of Dr. Benoit’s work is embedded in clinical care, and is in partnership with numerous stakeholders, including clinicians, health systems leaders and decision makers, and families across the province.
Her research focuses on testing and translating accessible, non-invasive approaches to optimizing care of infants, children, and families during times of pain, stress, and transition, and involves generation of new knowledge, synthesis of existing knowledge, and translation of knowledge into health system policy and practice.
She currently has several research projects underway.
Through a Nova Scotia Health Translating Research Into Care (TRIC) grant, she is working to identify and implement strategies to best support parent-led infant pain management.
She is also the recipient of a New Health Investigator Grant from Research Nova Scotia, which supports early-career health researchers engaged in work aligned with the province’s health research priorities. In this project, she is looking into the provincial implementation of the Baby-Friendly Initiative (BFI), a quality improvement best practice guideline to support infant feeding.
Dr. Benoit, who holds a Bachelor of Science in Human Nutrition (StFX), a Master of Science in Nursing (McGill University), and a PhD in Nursing (Dalhousie University), has been recognized for her work before. During her PhD, she received a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship for research examining the impact of breastfeeding on processing
