The fundamental characteristic that drives Dr. Stacey’s achievements in research is her profound wish to improve healthcare services and systems, through shared decision making, particularly empowering the patient – health professional interaction.
Her research and approaches to the development of decision support tools integrate the perspectives of patients as full and active members of health care decisions, allowing the use of the best evidence to improve their health outcomes, while respecting their own values and perspectives. As a prominent recent example of the impact of her research, she led the rapid development of tools supporting urgent decisional needs of retirement/nursing homes residents and their families about temporarily leaving the residence in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The decision-aids, featured in several news outlets, were accessed by thousands of individuals facing such difficult decisions. As with hundreds of other validated tools, these are publicly available on an impressive and popular website (https://decisionaid.ohri.ca/index.html), which Dr. Stacey continuously maintains and updates.
A recognized global leader, Dr. Stacey has influenced international health systems by informing and shaping health policy in Australia, Europe, Taiwan, and the United States of America. Throughout her nursing career, she has shaped scholarship in applied health services research, whilst always keeping in sight that healthcare delivery requires the engagement of both care providers and the individual patient.
The University of Ottawa Award for Excellence in Research is presented annually to two members of its teaching staff who have earned distinction for themselves and for the University as a result of the importance and exceptional characteristics of their research work.
Congratulations to Dr. Dawn Stacey for this well-deserved honour!