The first recipient of the Ann Carmichael Memorial Nursing Award, in honour of a respected long-term maternity nurse who spent the last of her career in St. Albert, has been named.
The inaugural award has been given to Tessa Fairbanks, a fourth-year nursing student at Grant MacEwan University.
“We knew this was an excellent way to honour Mom’s memory,” explained daughter Lindsey Carmichael, speaking on behalf of the family.
Carmichael’s nursing career extended over more than three decades from small Prairie hospitals to larger regional centres, even including a few years flying medevacs in the Northwest Territories.
She also worked in a variety of nursing disciplines, but she had a special passion for maternity. She spent the final 16 years of her working life at the Sturgeon Hospital, where she was a committed and integral member of the Labour and Delivery team.
She loved sharing the joy of a new arrival with the families in her community, and especially loved to hold, rock, and spoil the little ones, Lindsey continued. She said that this award to a dedicated nursing student is the perfect way to continue Ann’s legacy.
“It’s really, really touching. I think it’s exactly what my mom would want because she was so passionate about nursing. She had a hard struggle to become a nurse in the first place. A lot of people didn’t think she could do it. She had some physical challenges as well as the challenge we all have of trying to pay for our education in the first place, but she never let anybody stop her.”
“She loved what she did so very much. I think that she would be really, really happy that her memory is being honoured in this way and that, in some way, she is contributing to the successes of future nurses.”
Ann died in 2009, two days before her 56th birthday.
The $1,500 scholarship is open to senior nursing students at Grant MacEwan University, and is intended to help others who share the same devotion to the practice of nursing.
“Ann received a scholarship like this one,” her husband Gerry Carmichael said, “and she might not have been able to complete her schooling without it. We felt like the best way to honour her memory was to help other young nurses reach their dreams.”
Fairbanks is overjoyed to win the award.
“It means a lot to receive help along the way to achieving a lifelong goal," she said.
The Carmichael family intends to make the prize an annual award, with the intention of it becoming an endowment so that it will continue on forever.
