Empowering nurses as researchers: Dr. Katie Goldie's journey as Scientist in Nursing

| 23 Feb 2026

When Dr. Katie Goldie stepped into her role as Scientist in Nursing at Providence Care in 2023, she entered a newly established, high-impact position designed to strengthen the link between academic research and clinical nursing practice. This research chair, jointly funded by Providence Care and the Queen’s University School of Nursing, was created to embed nursing-led research directly within clinical care delivery.

“This role was about putting research led by nurses at the forefront of Providence Care’s research agenda,” -Dr. Goldie explains.

An Associate Professor at Queen’s School of Nursing with expertise in palliative and hospice care, health services research, and data science, she was well suited to bring that vision to life. Over the past two years, her program of research has focused on what high-quality end-of-life care looks like in practice, and how to measure and improve it, by combining real-world clinical partnerships with rigorous analytics to strengthen outcomes for patients and families and elevate nurses as research leaders. Here’s what that work looks like in practice.

Building research where care happens

From the outset, Dr. Goldie focused on a question that has shaped her career: How can healthcare systems better support people nearing the end of life?

One major project involved an in-depth review of patient records from Providence Care’s palliative care unit. Her team analyzed who was being admitted, how care was delivered in the final days of life, and which patient, clinical, and system factors predicted length of stay. 'This work helps us see the pressure points: what drives late admissions, intense symptom needs, or prolonged stays, so we can target improvements that actually change patients’ experiences', she said. Her appointment came at a pivotal moment: Providence Care was preparing to open AB Smith Homestead House, a 10-bed hospice. Dr. Goldie contributed to the hospice’s service delivery plan, helping shape how care would be organized, staffed, and evaluated from day one.

In parallel, she has also turned her attention to hospice staffing, an often overlooked but critical driver of care quality. By synthesizing international evidence, Dr. Goldie examined how different staffing models influence patient and family experiences, workforce sustainability, and team well-being. 'Despite the essential role staffing plays in patient outcomes and workforce stability, there was surprisingly little guidance on how hospices should structure and support their teams', she noted.

Her findings point to a clear message: quality care depends not only on staffing numbers, but on the right skill mix, strong interdisciplinary teamwork, ongoing training, and organizational systems that support staff to do their best work.

Looking ahead, she is pursuing a national vision- standardizing how hospice data are collected and shared across regions and provinces. Integrating these measures into existing health-systems data would enable programs to benchmark outcomes, learn from one another, and accelerate improvements in hospice care across the country. 'Comparable data lets us learn faster, what works, for whom, and in what context', she said. 'That’s how we make end-of-life care more compassionate, effective, and equitable across the region and beyond.'

Elevating nursing voices in research

Another core part of Dr. Goldie’s role has been cultural: helping nurses see research not as an intimidating task, but as a part of everyday practice. That integration has been made possible through close partnership with Dr. Sarah Moore-Vasram, a PhD-prepared Nurse Practitioner and Academic Clinician at Providence Care, whose leadership helped bridge clinical realities and research implementation on the ground, and with knowledge translation expert, Dr. Erna Snelgrove-Clarke, Professor Queen’s School of Nursing.

Dr. Goldie’s team took an intentionally hands-on approach to strengthening research engagement, using Lego Serious Play (LSP) to help staff translate real clinical experiences into a shared vision - and practical next steps. Participants from nursing, leadership, and academic roles built symbolic models and used guided dialogue to define what meaningful research engagement should look like at Providence Care.

The workshop surfaced a focused set of priorities, building accessible research infrastructure, deepening partnerships, and embedding research more fully into day-to-day practice, and translated them into concrete, time-bound actions. Building on that momentum, Dr. Goldie’s team, including Brooklyn Martin, RN and MNSc student, launched a staff survey to capture nurses’ interest in research, self-rated confidence and skills, and the supports required to remove barriers and the practical enablers needed to embed research engagement into everyday practice.

“Nurses are natural drivers of innovation, they see the problems and the opportunities first,” she said. “If we want research to be part of everyday practice, we need to understand what enables nurses to turn ideas into action.”

What’s next

As Dr. Goldie’s two-year term as Scientist in Nursing concludes, she is stepping into the role of Senior Associate Researcher at Providence Care while maintaining her academic position within the Queen’s School of Nursing.

“What I’m proudest of isn’t a single project or headline, it’s the people. Over the past two years, I had the privilege of mentoring 15 undergraduate and graduate students. If this role built anything lasting, it’s a pipeline of curious, capable clinicians and researchers who will carry this work forward long after my title changes.”

The next phase of her program will deepen and broaden the foundations she has built in palliative and hospice care, advancing end-of-life care that is measurable, equitable, and designed around the realities patients and families face.

First, she will accelerate hospice and palliative care analytics that directly inform decision-making: refining predictors of length of stay, testing hospice metrics, and translating findings into practical improvements in care planning, staffing, and service delivery across Southeast Ontario. In parallel, she will continue to strengthen the conditions that make nursing-led research sustainable, moving from workshops and visioning to visible infrastructure, protected time, and pathways that allow frontline nurses to lead and participate in research as part of everyday practice. Finally, she will advance a national agenda: building the partnerships needed to standardize hospice data across regions and embed those measures within existing health-system data, so programs can benchmark, learn faster, and improve together.

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Empowering nurses as researchers: Dr. Katie Goldie's journey as Scientist in Nursing

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