Registered Nurses Association honours two Citizen reporters
The work of two Citizen reporters has been recognized with Registered Nurses Association of Ontario media awards.
Elizabeth Payne won in the “daily newspaper, best series” category for her stories on the development of Canada’s Ebola vaccine. Joanne Laucius won in the “exceptional reporting on an RN/nursing issue” category for her stories on an Ontario bill that recognized PTSD as an occupational illness for firstresponders but not for nurses.
Payne spent months tracing the development of the Ebola vaccine, called VSV-EBOV, from Winnipeg, where it was developed at the National Microbial Laboratories, to Guinea, West Africa. The vaccine wasn’t available to prevent the deadly West African Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people. But it got to Guinea in time to save lives and is considered one of Canada’s greatest public health achievements.
Laucius started her reporting with a simple question: If a nurse isn’t a first-responder who faces traumatic experiences, then who is? Her work did an exemplary job of unpacking that question and explaining why the province’s nursing community felt devalued by Bill 163, Supporting Ontario’s First Responders Act.
The awards will be presented in Toronto on April 28.