Award Description

To support Registered Nurses enrolled in education at the baccalaureate or graduate level with an interest in any aspect of the broad specialty of neuroscience nursing. Applicants may be involved in any area of neuroscience across the lifespan and the continuum of care. Applicants must demonstrate excellence in neuroscience nursing and indicate how they contribute to the advancement of clinical practice, education, or research within this specialty.

Origin

The Julie Hall Scholarship for Neuroscience Nursing Scholarship was initiated in her memory by her family and friends shortly after her death in 1999.

Honoree background

Lesley Bell, CEO of the Ontario Nurses’ Association and a close friend, shared Julie Hall’s story in the Spring 1999 issue of ONA Vision: The following is an excerpt of that article. Julie Hall was someone you would want to have caring for you or your loved ones: she was a true professional. 

In her quiet gentle way, she would make the patient the most important person, regardless of what else may be going on around. There were certain passions in her life to which she was completely committed. One of them was nursing.

Julie had a varied and challenging nursing career, constantly striving to reach higher goals. She started at Queens University in 1969. From there, she went to Sunnybrook Hospital, where she developed her interest in neurology and neurosurgery. She then did post-graduate training in neuro-nursing in Montreal, and following that, transferred to St. Michael’s Hospital, where she became head nurse of the neurosurgical ICU. That job confirmed for Julie that her real love was not administrative work, but being at the patient’s bedside.

Julie left St Michael’s for a while and worked in a clinical role in the head injury rehabilitation unit at Queen Elizabeth Hospital. She returned to St. Michael’s to help with research in the Multiple Sclerosis clinic, which she continued to do even while undergoing chemotherapy treatments.
Julie was also an active member of the Canadian Association of Neuroscience Nursing. She attended their conferences, organized their events and presented papers on neuro-nursing.

A founding member of the Rehab Nurses Association, Julie passed on her significant expertise in neuro-nursing to many Ryerson nursing students, as well as through her role as assistant and head nurse in the neuro ICU at St Michael’s.

Not only was Julie a highly accomplished technical nurse with an extensive knowledge base, she taught nurses to enjoy working with patients and to enjoy them as people. The nurses who worked with Julie say she had phenomenally high standards of nursing care, which she imposed on herself and expected from her colleagues. Julie lived and taught a philosophy of patient care that put the comfort and dignity of the patient first.

Julie was a very strong advocate for nurses and nursing, and she was an active supporter of ONA. She believed that nurses should be treated as professional members of the team, that they required strong representation and that this would result in enhanced patient care. Julie was also responsible for developing trust and respect between the doctors and nurses on her unit.

Julie had an extraordinary ability to connect with people and to make them feel significant – make them feel that she really cared about them, their views and their problems. She cared about them as people, and it showed. This, more than anything made her an exceptional nurse.
Julie impacted on the many nurses with whom you shared your philosophy of nursing and approach to patient care.