It’s a hat-trick for Nursing at the Jewish General Hospital. For the third year in a row, a Segal Cancer Centre nurse brought home the top Quebec honour in her profession.
Lucie Tremblay devoted 35 years to cancer care at the JGH, earning plaudits from colleagues for her compassion, leadership and innovative practices. This spring, her career was crowned with a major distinction: the 2022-2023 Award of Excellence from the Quebec Association of Oncology Nurses.
The award coincided with another significant moment in Ms. Tremblay’s life—retirement.
“This is an honour, and a lovely conclusion to my career,” she says (Ms. Tremblay is not related to the Associate CEO of CIUSSS West-Central Montreal, who has the same name).
The trio of consecutive awards underscores the exceptional quality of nursing cancer care at the JGH. Renata Benc, a Clinical Nurse Consultant, won the nursing association’s Award of Excellence last year, and Chantal Cloutier, a Pivot Nurse in Hematology prior to retiring, won it in 2020-2021.
Ms. Tremblay, who was Assistant Head Nurse and Educator in the JGH Oncology Clinic until her retirement in May, believes the successive wins are no coincidence. The JGH creates an environment that allows nurses to flourish and innovate, she says.
“People often asked me how I could stay at the JGH for 35 years. I tell them it’s because I never had time to get bored.”
Lucie Tremblay
“I had the privilege of working on a team that’s constantly on the lookout for new projects and new ways of improving patient care,” she says. “If a project is the slightest bit innovative, it will move forward. You can easily be fulfilled in that kind of environment.”
That was the case for Ms. Tremblay. Launching her career at the JGH straight out of nursing school at the Université de Montréal, she dedicated herself almost immediately to oncology, first in surgery and then in clinical practice. Over the years, she earned praise for her commitment to high standards of care and her “human touch” with patients and families.
“Patients expressed great confidence in her advice and many said she’d played a determining role in their ability to overcome difficulties linked to their illness,” says Gerald Batist, Director of the Segal Cancer Centre. “Family members recognized her positive support and her ability to communicate in an honest and human way.”
Ms. Tremblay was instrumental in helping develop projects to support patients such as the Belong cancer care app and an online self-evaluation tool. She also spearheaded the initiative to integrate the Quebec Association of Oncology Nurses into Canada’s national association.
As well, her leadership skills are credited with mentoring an entire generation of nurses in our CIUSSS. “With her knowledge and high level of clinical judgment, she allowed a large number of nurses in our organization to thrive,” says Karine Lepage, Clinical Administrative Coordinator in the Divisions of Medicine and Oncology.
Ms. Tremblay describes oncology as a passion that inspired her for an entire career. “There has been an enormous amount of movement in oncology over the past 35 years,” she says. “To have been part of that movement has been a privilege.”
