Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Kimberley Widger
RN, PhD, CHPCN(C)

Associate Professor

“Every family of a child diagnosed with a life-threatening illness should receive optimal pediatric palliative care throughout the illness regardless of where they receive care and the ultimate outcome of the illness.”

Dr. Kimberley Widger’s research focuses on examining and enhancing structures, processes, and outcomes of pediatric palliative care provided to children living with life-threatening illnesses and their families. She recently completed a study funded by the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer aimed at enhancing the quality of palliative care for children with cancer and their families by providing education to health professionals. Through the study, nearly 3500 health professionals from every province and territory across Canada attended one of the education sessions. Following the education intervention there was significantly earlier involvement of specialized pediatric palliative care teams and earlier discussion of advanced care planning for the children who died. Her current research is focused on the use of administrative data to examine the impact of specialized pediatric palliative care teams on a variety of child and family outcomes.

Dr. Widger holds a Career Development Award from the Canadian Child Health Clinician Scientist Program and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Strategy for Patient Oriented Research. At the Hospital for Sick Children she is a Nursing Research Associate with the Paediatric Advanced Care Team (PACT) and an Adjunct Scientist within the Research Institute.