Human interaction remains key to Faculty of Nursing’s success

Alice the skeleton has seen a world of change in nursing over her time at the University of Calgary.

The young woman was just 19 when she passed away nearly a century ago.

Today, she is a resident of the Clinical Simulation Learning Centre at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Nursing, but has been integral to training generations of future nurses since before the university received autonomy in 1966.

Alice also serves as a metaphor of sorts in that, as much as technologies and methods change, the focus remains the same: nursing is one human caring for another.

This was a message that strongly impacted a UCalgary Nursing student who rose through the academic ranks at the university, eventually becoming the faculty's latest dean. 

“Health care has changed and nursing education has changed, but the heart of nursing —   caring for others and human interaction —  remains unchanged,” says Dean Catherine Laing, a four-time UCalgary alum. “Until the end of time, even with robots and all that technology will be able to do, patients want to hear someone say, ‘I got you.’” 

From the oncology unit…

Laing, BPE’94, BN’98, MN’08, PhD’13, wasn’t set on a specific career path when she left high school and, after studying physical education, spent time travelling and working overseas before returning to UCalgary as a nursing undergraduate.

Laing remembers running into a family friend at the old Alberta Children’s Hospital during her third year of studies, who offered to show her around the oncology unit after her shift in the paediatric unit.

It was a chance encounter that changed everything for her.

“When I walked into the unit, I just felt like, ‘Yep, this is it,’” Laing says. “Sure enough, I got my last rotation there in my senior year and got hired right away.”

From starting as a student nurse to eventually becoming program manager of the paediatric oncology unit, and many positions in-between, her mindset has always been to walk through all open doors to see what opportunities lay ahead, including earning her master’s and PhD.

…to the classroom

One of those doors opened at UCalgary in 2013 when then-Dean Dianne Tapp, MN’93, PhD’97, approached Laing about applying for a faculty position.

She said she wanted someone with oncology expertise, and, while academia wasn’t something that Laing had considered previously, it was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up.

Within a couple of years of Laing becoming an assistant professor, Tapp was once again knocking on Laing’s door to consider an associate dean role.

“Most people don’t go into academia for leadership as they love research and teaching,” says Laing. “Sometimes people find their way into leadership accidentally and I was a little different because I had come from probably seven or eight years of leadership experience at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.”

She took on the role of associate dean undergraduate programs in 2018, then acting dean in 2023. In 2024, Laing served as interim dean before taking on the position of dean in July 2025.

Taking a chance

While her research originally focused on paediatric oncology, Laing recently shifted her focus to developing an innovative approach for undergraduate admissions into the UCalgary Nursing program.

In 2025, the faculty announced it would introduce a lottery-based system for admission into its main-campus Bachelor of Science in Nursing program. Laing’s motivation for championing this program was driven by nursing programs across North America being significantly oversubscribed, resulting in extremely high admission averages required for entry. This created a barrier to entry for many eligible and well-suited applicants to the nursing profession.

Oversubscribed nursing programs, however, aren’t translating into an abundance of nurses working in the profession, with the Canadian Nurses’ Association reporting that up to 50 per cent of newly graduated nurses leave the profession within two years of entering practice.

Why there is such a high attrition rate for early career nurses is a broader question than what Laing’s research covers, although she notes high academic achievement doesn’t always align with being a great nurse.

Laing admits the new admissions approach is a risky move, but one worth taking to help get the right students into the nursing program.

“We’ve seen it time and time again where academic prowess doesn’t always translate to the clinical setting because you have to take what you know academically and apply it,” she says. “We try to instil in students early on that it’s not about the A+ marks; it’s about how you take that knowledge and apply it with a real-life patient.”

Her hypothesis is that, by reducing the barrier to entry into nursing programs, a larger cohort of qualified applicants will be eligible, not just applicants with the highest GPAs. That includes students who passionately want to become nurses but may not have marks in the mid to high 90s. 

Embracing a technological future

Nurses are the quarterbacks of patient care, says Laing.

Not only are they usually the first professionals seen at triage, but they are also the main point of contact in co-ordinating patient care, including physiotherapy, specialists and consults, among a host of other needs.

It’s that face-to-face, human interaction that Laing says won’t change as nurses navigate the technological transformation that is ahead with artificial intelligence and robotics.

She says that transition is a positive as it will allow nurses to increase their presence with patients instead of focusing on administrative tasks.

“It’s such a privilege to be a nurse; I always tell people it’s the best job in the world,” Laing says. “It’s also such a privilege to educate students to become nurses, as we’re showing them how to be with patients in their most intimate, scary or distressing moments of their lives.”

It’s a reminder for nursing students that, while they typically deal with skeletons like Alice in the classroom, it’s human beings that remain central to everything they will do in the next 60 years and beyond — something Laing says she has always held very sacred.