Dr. Debbie Sheppard-LeMoine is the assistant director at St. Francis Xavier University Rankin School of Nursing. An experienced Canadian educator with international teaching, research and project experiences Debbie was an assistant professor at Dalhousie University for 20 years and on faculty at the University of Calgary in Qatar for almost 4 years. Her current, international research focus is on interprofessional learning within a simulated, family assessment environment. She is an expert in curriculum design and revision, community/public health/family nursing practice and has recently completed a study on enhanced home visiting practices that surround women and children who live within vulnerability in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Currently she teaches research and community nursing and is the coordinator for advanced major/honor’s studentsproject and thesis work at STFX. She has also taught an international MN leadership course via distance, supervisedinternational MN student projects, been on MN thesis committees and been an external examiner. Debbie’s teaching for the last 20 years has focused on Nursing of Families based upon CFAM( Wright & Leahey, 2013) and Beliefs and Illness: A Model for Healing, Wright & Bell, 2009.
Debbie loves trying innovative learning methodologies that provide creative, interactive ways to build student’s involvement in their own learning. Debbie has used simulation with standardized patients and actors for many years in Canada and internationally to develop family assessment and interviewing skills among thousands of BScN Canadian and International students based upon the Calgary Family Assessment Model. She has expanded her work to include an inter professional focus by bringing together medical and nursing students in learning together family assessment and intervention.
With ten years of experience working as part of an international mobility project team Debbie has enjoyed the opportunities that working internationally brings to broadening perspectives of academics, practitioners and students. She has been part of collaborative research teams in Canada and internationally, published as part of a team in peer reviewed journals and presented individually and as part of a team at international peer reviewed conferences. She is the immediate, past chair pf the Canadian Registered Nurse Exam Committee for CNA in Ottawa. At present, she is representing Nova Scotia as a subject matter expert in the review of the entry level competencies with the Canadian Council of RN Regulators.
