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Roberta Heale
Assistant Professor
School of Nursing, Laurentian University
B.Sc.N. (Toronto), M.N. (Athabasca), R.N.(E.C.)
Roberta Heale received her BScN from the University of Toronto in 1988. In the following years she worked in several acute care hospital settings including General Medicine, Neurosurgery, Intensive Care Nursery, Intensive Care Unit and ER. In 1999, Roberta obtained licensure as a primary health care nurse practitioner and began full-time practice in Sudbury. She completed a Master of Nursing degree from Athabasca University in 2005. In addition, Roberta was a preceptor for many nurse practitioner students and began teaching in the COUPN NP program as well as in the Master of Nursing program at Athabasca University.
In 2006, Roberta accepted the position of Assistant Professor at Laurentian University School of Nursing where she now teaches full time in the undergraduate nursing program, the nurse practitioner and Master of Nursing Science programs. She commenced a Doctorate of Nursing Practice degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio in 2007.
In 2006, Roberta, along with her colleague Marilyn Butcher, were awarded the development of Canada's first NP-Led Clinic. The Sudbury District Nurse Practitioner Clinics are the result. The success of this clinic and the NP-Led Clinic model were such that in 2008 the Ontario Government announced the development of 25 additional clinics in this model by 2012. For more information go to www.sdnpc.ca.
Research projects with a focus on smoking cessation, nurse practitioner education and clinical practice, structures of health systems and interprofessional team functioning. Roberta is a co-creator of the Interprofessional Team Functioning Survey that can be viewed here.