2025 Leadership Award
2025 Leadership Award
The Board of Directors of the Canadian Palliative Care Nursing Association (CPCNA) is pleased to announce this year’s recipient of the Palliative Care Nursing Leadership Award
Valerie Fiset RN, PhD
Ontario
The Palliative Care Nursing Leadership Award is to honour a member of the Canadian Palliative Care Nursing Association whose practice reflects components of the mission and purpose of CPCNA. This nurse must demonstrate extraordinary leadership through advocacy for high quality palliative care, through generating knowledge and research, establishing partnerships, and contributing to professional development of others through education, consultation, leadership and mentorship.
Valerie had a long history of participation with the CHPCNIG/CHPCNG, and has been an active member of CPCNA since it formed in 2021. She has been involved with the Journal Club, is a member of the Professional Practice Committee, and will be contributing to the revision of the Nursing Standards document.
Valerie (Val) has more than twenty years of leadership in health and academic settings. She is a passionate leader, mentor, researcher and educator who has committed to her own ongoing education, receiving her PhD in nursing from the University of Ottawa in 2019. Dr. Fiset has served as a nursing professor and academic administrator at Algonquin College and St Lawrence College. She is currently an adjunct professor at the School of Nursing at the University of Ottawa. Val helped to establish the Palliative Care Research and Education Unit at U of Ottawa, which is now known as the Palliative Care and Nursing Ethics Hub. The ‘Hub’, which is also affiliated with CPCNA, was formed to provide leadership, mentorship and support for professors and graduate students pursuing excellence in palliative care research and education.
Val is the Director of the Champlain Hospice Palliative Care Program, in Ottawa. There, she coordinates service development, education and system leadership for hospice palliative care across the Champlain region, working with providers and agencies to ensure access, quality and innovation in palliative services.
Colleagues have shared that “Val is a pillar of the palliative care community in the Champlain region and beyond. She exemplifies the spirit of leadership that this award represents, through her deep commitment to practice, education, advocacy, and connection.” “Her impact is felt not only in policies and programs, but in the countless individual relationships she has nurtured throughout her career.”
The CPCNA is proud and honoured to name Dr. Valerie Fiset as the recipient of the 2025 Palliative Care Nursing Leadership Award. We thank her for her dedication and service and believe that she truly exemplifies the principles of CPCNA to ‘Live Well, Die Well, Nurse Well’.
