David Kenneth Wright

David Kenneth Wright is the academic lead for palliative care and nursing ethics at the Centre for Research on Health and Nursing. He holds specialty certification in hospice palliative care nursing from the Canadian Nurses Association, and engaged in clinical practice in hospital-based palliative care as well as at a residential hospice. In 2021, he co-founded the Canadian Palliative Care Nursing Association. His current research projects focus on grief and grief literacy, nursing ethics and narrative methodologies.

Professor Wright is not currently accepting new students for thesis supervision.

• Nursing ethics
• Death, dying and grief
• Palliative and end-of-life care
• Qualitative research

Palliative Care and Nursing Ethics Research Hub

Additional publications via Google Scholar

Invited

• Wright, DK, & Pesut, B. (2023). Traversing landscapes of dying and grief: A palliative care ethic for nursing at the end of life. Chapter 16 in R. Starzomski, J. L. Storch & P. Rodney (Eds.), Toward a moral horizon: Nursing ethics for leadership and practice (3rd ed.). University of Victoria Libraries.
• McMillan, K., Wright, DK, McPherson, C., Ma, K*., & Bitzas, V. (2021). Visitor restrictions, palliative care, and epistemic agency: A qualitative study of nurses’ relational practice during the coronavirus pandemic. Global Qualitative Nursing Research, 8, 1-12.

Peer-reviewed

• Sofronas, M*., Carnevale, FA., Macdonald, ME., Bitzas, V., & Wright, DK. (2024). “We are not the person we will be when these things happen”: Reflections on personhood from an ethnography of neuropalliative care. Nursing Inquiry.
• Wright, DK, Ma, G., Charlebois, K., Gimmig, K., & Hodgson, L. (2023). “We're cancer care nurses": Perceptions about providing palliative care in a community hospital. Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing, 25(2), 82-89.
• Wright, DK., Chan, L., Fishman, J., & Macdonald, ME. (2021). “Reflection and soul searching”: Negotiating nursing identity at the fault lines of palliative care and medical assistance in dying. Social Science & Medicine, 289:114366.
• Grassau, P., Stinchcombe, A., Thomas, R., & Wright, DK. (2021). Centering sexual and gender diversity within Compassionate Communities: Insights from a community network of LGBTQ2S+ older adults. Palliative Care and Social Practice, 15:26323524211042630.
• Sorensen, S*., Sofronas, M*., Hudson, H*., & Wright, DK. (2021). Supporting ethical ICU nursing practice in organ donation: An analysis of personhood. Canadian Journal of Critical Care Nursing, 32(1), 18-26.
• Sofronas, M*., & Wright, DK. (2021). Neuropalliative care: An integrative review of the nursing literature. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 117.
• Wright, DK., Gastmans, C., Vandyk, A., & Dierckx de Casterlé, B. (2020). Moral identity and palliative sedation: A systematic review of normative nursing literature. Nursing Ethics, 27(3), 868-886.
• Ma, K.*, Wright, DK., Vanderspank-Wright, B., Peterson, W., & Carnevale, F.A. (2020). Nurses’ moral experiences of ethically meaningful end-of-life care: Distress, resilience, responsibility, and care. Research and Theory for Nursing Practice, 34(3), 269-285.
• Skinner, E*., Jacob, JD., Vanderspank-Wright, B., & Wright, DK. (2020). Ethics of finitude: Nursing and the palliative approach in geriatric and forensic psychiatry. Global Qualitative Nursing Research, 7, 1-7.
• Hudson, H*., Perron, A., & Wright, DK. (2019). Palliative care & the injustice of mass incarceration: critical reflections on a harm reduction response to end of life behind bars. Witness: The Canadian Journal of Critical Nursing Discourse, 1(2), 4-16.
• Hudson, H*., & Wright, DK. (2019). Towards a guiding framework for prison palliative care nursing ethics. Advances in Nursing Science, 42(4), 341-357.
• Sofronas, M*., Wright, D.K., & Carnevale, F.A. (2018). Personhood: A evolutionary concept analysis for nursing ethics, theory, practice and research. Nursing Forum, 53, 406-415.
• Wright, DK., Brajtman, S., & Macdonald, ME. (2018). Relational ethics of delirium care: Findings from a hospice ethnography. Nursing Inquiry, 25(3), e12234.

* Student