Dr. Joan Lesmond

When Dr. Joan Lesmond first came to Canada, becoming an expert in the field of community healthcare was the farthest thing from her mind. Thirty years later, Dr. Lesmond is the executive director of the Saint Elizabeth Healthcare Foundation and executive director of community engagement for Saint Elizabeth Healthcare.

She is also the former president of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario. “When you come into a new system,” she says, “you have to assess, ‘What do I really need to be? What can I be?’ I started off working in factories, babysitting and doing a multitude of other things. Finally, I found an opportunity to work as a healthcare aid in a nursing home. That’s when my desire for helping people grew and I decided that I wanted to become a nurse.”

Dr. Lesmond pursued her studies while working full time and even had to repeat one course that she would eventually end up teaching at Ryerson University. During her time in the field, Dr. Lesmond has noticed that nursing is quite popular among Black women. She believes there are a few reasons for this: “It’s a caring profession and it’s also a career that’s very, very fulfilling.”

With that fulfillment comes a host of unique responsibilities, especially for the new generation of nurses. Dr. Lesmond says today’s nurses are able to help a patient navigate through the system, rather than just care for him or her.

This means they must look at things from a policy perspective combined with political and patient-centred awareness as they encounter an empowered client group. “We are dealing with clients who are technologically savvy and can access a lot of the same information that you would normally get from a nurse,” she explains. “So the nurse really has to be super prepared to deal with the new knowledge-powered clients.”

Another advantage of being a nurse today is the ability to branch out into different areas of the medical field, such as administration, education or policy. Dr. Lesmond says nurses who are thinking about expanding their career must have a plan. “They have to seize the opportunities and they need to be able to look at things from a broader perspective,” she says.

Advancement in the field does, however, bring obstacles, to which Dr. Lesmond is no stranger. She strongly believes that an in-depth education and sense of self-worth can yield excellent results. “Some people may wonder, ‘How can a Black woman get these opportunities?’ I’ve never seen myself as being second to anyone and that’s what I also practice,” she says.

It’s this sentiment that has allowed Dr. Lesmond to succeed in difficult situations, including an incident during a meeting where someone quipped about how lucky she was to have her job. “I knew where he was going and I said, ‘Actually, it was not luck. I was the best damned qualified person out of the 10 people who applied.’ He was taken by surprise. I think part of my thinking comes from my parents who taught me to believe in who I am and that I am no less than anyone because I’m a Black woman.”

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