Dr. Fournelle is a nurse educator who shares her expertise on family nursing with undergraduate and graduate nursing students at the University of Sherbrooke (Université de Sherbrooke) in Quebec, Canada. She has used the family systems approach to guide her educational practices for more than 10 years, first as a lecturer at the Université de Montréal, where she taught in the bachelor’s and master’s programs in nursing, and now for a year and a half as an assistant professor at the Université de Sherbrooke. Dr. Fournelle provides information on key concepts in family nursing to help her students develop the communication skills they need to interact with families and other health care professionals. Her goal is to make sure students are prepared to collaborate with interdisciplinary team members to provide family-centered care with a specific focus on perinatal and palliative care.
Dr. Fournelle developed an interest in family nursing practice, teaching, and research early in her professional life. After observing a significant gap between the type of support she considered essential for individuals and their loved ones and what she observed in clinical settings, Dr. Fournelle chose to pursue further education in family nursing to transform practice and positively influence her fellow nurses. As she stated, “not integrating the family approach into care seemed to me then—and still seems to me now—to be nonsensical.”
Dr. Fournelle completed her master’s degree under the mentorship of Professor Fabie Duhamel, a former member of IFNA. Prof. Duhamel’s expertise and commitment to the family approach were critically important to Dr. Fournelle’s academic and professional development. After completing her master’s degree, Dr. Fournelle pursued doctoral studies to deepen her understanding of systemic foundations, particularly from an interdisciplinary perspective. Her first research project focused on modeling the family approach in nursing practice in Quebec. She is finalizing the model and will disseminate the results soon. Her hope is that the project will contribute to the influence and recognition of nursing expertise in the family approach. Future studies will focus on adjusting and adapting family systems nursing practice in Quebec to better reflect Quebec’s current healthcare system.
As an educator, Dr. Fournelle has developed and implemented innovative pedagogical approaches designed to expand use of the family systems approach in nursing training programs. Her teaching draws from several key authors including Duhamel, 2015 (La santé et la famille); Galvin et al., 2018 (Family communication: cohesion and change); Kaakinen et al., 2018 (Family Health Care Nursing); and McGoldrick et al., 2016 (The expanding family life cycle). Dr. Fournelle’s work extends to the clinical setting, where she shares her family nursing insights and expertise with nurses to ensure they have the tools they need to support and intervene with families. Dr. Fournelle aims to challenge and engage her students. She encourages them to think differently, transform their practices, and inspire their colleagues. Pursuing these outcomes, even when she does not observe them directly, motivates her to pursue her teaching and research projects, even in the face of significant challenges in the healthcare system.
If you are interested in connecting with Dr. Fournelle, you can find her profile on LinkedIn. Dr. Fournelle also shared a recent publication that may be of interest to IFNA members:
Martinez, A-M. & Fournelle, S. (2023) La communication : noyau central de la pratique infirmière. Éditions JFD. https://www.editionsjfd.com/boutique/sante-1239/la-communication–noyau-central-de-la-pratique-infirmiere-11657 (Title translation: Communication : central core of nursing practice)