In September 2025, doctoral candidate Allana LeBlanc joined the ranks of UBC's most elite students when she was awarded a Killam Doctoral Scholarship.
January 8, 2026
Ms. LeBlanc is an accomplished critical care nurse and emerging clinician scientist whose work is transforming patient-oriented research in intensive care. Her professional goal is to advance patient engagement and improve outcomes for individuals recovering from critical illness, while strengthening the role of clinician scientists within advanced nursing practice.
She has led multiple patient-centred initiatives in the Vancouver General Hospital ICU, including early mobilization protocols, family participation in rounds, and enhanced end-of-life care practices. Ms. LeBlanc has already served as principal or primary investigator on several studies, such as examining patient-centred rehabilitation, long-term outcomes of ICU survivors, nurses’ decision-making about analgesia, and caregiver experiences after cardiac arrest, all supported by competitive funding and interprofessional partnerships.
At UBC, she is building her doctoral research under the supervision of Dr. Fuchsia Howard and has collaborated closely with Dr. Sandra Lauck, and other leaders in critical illness survivorship, cerebrovascular ischemia, and advanced practice nursing. Her contributions extend nationally through her long-standing involvement with the Canadian Association of Critical Care Nurses and her role in developing updated Canadian guidelines for death determination.
With a strong foundation in clinical expertise, implementation science, patient engagement, and mixed-methods research, Ms. LeBlanc is exceptionally well positioned to lead impactful, patient-oriented research that will shape the future of critical care nursing in Canada.
The Killam Doctoral Scholarships are announced annually from the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Fund for Advanced Studies. These are the most prestigious graduate awards available at UBC, and are awarded to the top doctoral candidates in the annual Tri-Agency Canada Graduate Scholarships - Doctoral (CGS-D) and UBC Affiliated Fellowship competition.
ABSTRACT
Patient engagement during a long stay in the intensive care unit.
Patients who stay in the intensive care unit for a long time are at high risk to difficulties with strength, feelings or thinking that can have a negative effect on quality of life. These problems can continue after they leave hospital. One possibility for prevention might be for patients and health care professionals to work together while the patient is still in the ICU to develop an individualized plan of care. This study will explore strategies for patients and health care professionals to work together to set goals that can be achieved in the ICU for decreasing time on a mechanical ventilator, exercising to gain strength, and tracking progress.
Twenty long stay intensive care unit patients will be recruited to participate in the study along with ten health care professionals. The study team will collect information about patients when they are in the intensive care unit (age, diagnosis, how long they are in the intensive care unit or on a mechanical ventilator) and measure their physical strength. Patients will have two appointments after they are discharged from hospital (6 and 12 months) when health care professionals will check if they are having problems with strength, difficult feelings, or trouble thinking. The researchers will interview the patients after their recovery about what they think and feel about the strategies they used in the intensive care unit. Health care professionals will also be interviewed about the strategies.
This is a small-scale study that will test different parts of the research to help plan for a large scale study in the future. The research may help nurses, doctors, and physical therapists to work with patients more effectively and help patients recover more fully after the intensive care unit.