Therese Astillero received the Ontario Nurse Informatics Group (ONIG) scholarship through RNFOO in 2018. This scholarship provides opportunities to Registered Nurses who wish to pursue further education in informatics.
A Registered Nurse since 2014, Therese understood the opportunities for nurses to contribute to quality health care through health data, information and knowledge management enabled by the use of technology. She elected to pursue a Master of Health Informatics degree at the University of Toronto. Therese states that the program “helped transitioned me from a full time clinical role to a digital role where I am able to leverage my clinical skills to help patients and advance the use of technology in the healthcare space.” She currently combines a clinical nursing role in a hospital with work as a patient education specialist focusing on a patient engagement application.
A patient engagement application is a tool to enable clearer and better communication and interaction between patients and healthcare workers via cellphone, computer, or tablet. As Therese describes it, her role “is to help build and program patient instructions into the app so that patients are better prepared for before and after surgery.”
Therese wishes to thank RNFOO “for helping me to complete my masters and lead me on to a new journey that advances the value of the nursing profession and skillsets outside of a direct clinical role.”
