Alumni Spotlight: Christine Sorensen

Christine Sorensen served as president of the British Columbia Nurses’ Union during the height of the pandemic, responsible for advocating for the safety and well-being of 48,000 nurses at more than 700 work sites across the province. After stepping down from the leadership position in 2021, she reflected on what she wanted for the next chapter of her life.

“Going back to school to do a master’s was something of a personal challenge,” she says. “I had turned 55 and was reflecting on what might be next and where I should focus my energy for my own health and well-being. The MHLP in Clinical Education covered areas I was very interested in – including governance, business acumen, policy development and health care system change.”

Although she had completed certificate programs in leadership and governance at Queen’s University and the Institute of Corporate Directors, she wanted the challenge of pursuing a master’s degree so she could explore topics at deeper levels.

Going back to school

Christine graduated from UBC in 1989 with an honour’s degree in nursing and returned more than 30 years later, in 2022, to start a professional master’s degree. “I have always been comfortable using technology, but the first few weeks were a steep learning curve as I adapted to being a student in a new era where you take notes on your laptop rather than by pen and paper!”

The program includes courses in clinical education and curriculum development taught by leading faculty from the School of Nursing. “I developed a new appreciation for how incredibly hard the academic world works to create broad-thinking thoughtful health-care professionals.”

All Clinical Education students complete a three-month practicum in the last term of the program. Christine connected with Stenberg College, a private post-secondary institution that offers a diploma in psychiatric nursing. She worked with the college’s director of psychiatric nursing to help develop Stenberg's new online curriculum focused on health care policy and leadership for their new bachelor’s of psychiatric nursing degree. “I was able to take everything I had learned in the MHLP program and apply it to this work – and after graduating I taught this section of the course in their diploma program for two years,” she says.

About 40 percent of the MHLP courses are taught through UBC Sauder’s Robert H. Lee Graduate School of Business. One highlight was the business boot camp in the summer, an intense three-week course that covers the basics of accounting, organizational behaviour and human resources, finance, marketing, business technology management and professional development

Other highlights were Dr. Justin Bull’s course on leadership and sustainability and a course on indigenous relations and economic development, which felt particularly relevant to Christine, who is of Metis heritage and is keenly interested in meaningful reconciliation.

The business and leadership courses bring together MHLP students with students from the Master of Engineering Leadership (MEL) programs, who have professional backgrounds in engineering and architecture.

“A selling point of the MHLP for me was that it brought together allied health care professionals to learn together in the clinical education courses,” she says. “And learning alongside the MEL students in the business and leadership courses pushed that interdisciplinary experience even further. The engineering mindset of breaking down complicated issues into discrete solvable problems has definite relevance when thinking about ways to support broad structural system change. Conversely, I think the engineers learn from the allied health care professionals that we need to take human factors into account and not everything can be broken down to a simple A+B=C linear equation.”

Leadership at the governance level

“One thing I was looking for from this program was the ability to move to the next level of leadership and help build system change through board governance,” says Christine. “Through this program I have a much better understanding of the challenges facing post-secondary institutions, which I am applying in my role as governor at Thompson Rivers University and as a board member of the BC Patient Care & Quality Review Board.”

Christine believes that a well-governed board will ask an organization’s management the challenging questions that can support system change. “Board members can ask questions that challenge current ideas and push to avoid the status quo,” she says. “We need to do things differently: to look at Indigenous involvement, to look at DEI, to review climate change and environmental readiness. We need to look at those human factors and ensure alignment across all levels to get everyone on the same page.”

She speaks highly of the MHLP’s transformative power. “The MHLP expanded my knowledge and understanding of academia, of clinical education and of the post-secondary education system. It was a personally enriching experience that challenged my ideas, broadened my thinking and gave me confidence to use my skills in new areas.”