Linda Lee O'Brien‑Pallas
Fall 2016 Honorary Degree Recipient
Doctor of Laws (honoris causa)
Dr. Linda O’Brien-Pallas’ trailblazing research has led to changes in Canada’s health-care system and many others around the world to improve the well-being, quality of work life and workplace satisfaction of nurses. Her needs-based health human resource planning framework remains an internationally recognized standard, a robust model to better support primary health-care workers, nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives.
Dr. O’Brien-Pallas is Professor Emerita at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Nursing, where she was a faculty member for 23 years. During that time, she was one of the Faculty’s most successful nurse scientists, generating $40 million in external funding and co-founding the Nursing Health Services Research Unit in 1990 — the first funded nursing research unit in Canada.
Her scholarly work and achievements have made substantial contributions to the profession of nursing and to health services delivery in Canada and internationally. These include research on retention and recruitment in the face of projected human resource challenges, informing strategies implemented in Nova Scotia and across Canada to help avert an immediate crisis in nursing human resources this decade. Her work continues to have global reach through organizations like the WHO/PAHO Collaborating Centre in ±«Óătv’s School of Nursing, led by her former PhD student Dr. Gail Tomblin Murphy.
From 2000 to 2010, Dr. O’Brien-Pallas served as National Chair of Nursing/Health Human Resources for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation. Among her many awards and honours are three sequential Career Scientist Awards (1989-1999) from the Ontario Ministry of Health, fellowship in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences (2005), and the Canadian Nurses Association’s Jeanne Mance Award (2006) — Canada’s highest award for nursing. This is her first honorary degree.