The 2024 Award recognizes Watt-Watson’s long and dedicated career in pain research. She says it is an honour to be recognized by colleagues both nationally and internationally for her efforts to improve pain management.
Professor Emeritus Judy Watt-Watson was the 2024 recipient of the Canadian Pain Society’s Distinguished Service Award, recognizing her long and successful career as a nurse scientist and pain researcher.
A past president of the Canadian Pain Society, Watt-Watson is internationally renowned for making pain management visible. During her PhD (1997), she conducted the first comprehensive study identifying pain symptoms after cardiac bypass surgery while exploring patient rights to pain management. Since then, she has been instrumental in ensuring standards of pain care were established in Canada. She led the campaign to include pain in the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation Standards and has been a tireless advocate for better pain education among the health professions.
“The point of all my work has been that people deserve good pain management. The International Association for the Study of Pain has established that pain management is a human right, and while we can’t cure all pain, we should be able to try to get it as low as possible,” says Watt-Watson.
In 2000, Watt-Watson helped to create the U of T Centre for the Study of Pain and was named inaugural Chair of their interfaculty pain curriculum, which continues to be a collaborative initiative involving health-science faculties including Bloomberg Nursing.
“The U of T Pain Centre has continued to grow and be a cornerstone of pain education for our health professions,” says Watt-Watson. “Its creation was really a watershed moment for researchers with this expertise, and our interprofessional model has been cited in several publications as an example of how to create and implement a good pain curriculum.”
Much of Watt-Watson’s focus on pain and pain education stems from one of her earliest encounters with the healthcare system as a second year BScN student. She recalls sitting with her aunt who was dying from stomach cancer and crying quietly from the pain. When her aunt asked her to inquire about pain medication from the nurse’s station, Watt-Watson remembers being told that it was too early for her aunt to receive medication and she would have to wait.
“I remember feeling so powerless, knowing all I could do was go back to her room and hold her hand to try and get her through it,” says Watt-Watson.
Following her work in clinical practice, where she says she saw similar situations unfold with patients and their lack of effective and timely pain management, Watt-Watson chose to pursue a Master’s and then a PhD in an effort to find ways to address the gaps and challenges that arose in assessing and managing pain in clinical settings, including identifying risk factors related to certain procedures.
“I hope that I’ve made an impact on patients experience, and health professional education,” says Watt-Watson. “Changes to professional education around pain have been critical and with the University of Toronto being so supportive in this space, I think we have made a real difference.”
Watt-Watson continues her work on an international scale. She is a member of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), and was the Chair of its subgroup that developed the Interprofessional Pain Curriculum. As a member of their Pain Education Working Group, she helps to assess and evaluate geographically diverse curricula for Pain Camps and Pain Schools, including those from countries with fewer resources, to see how they can be supported in their efforts to improve pain management.
“It was an honour to be recognized for this award by my colleagues both nationally and internationally, and it is through their continued commitment as pain researchers and clinician scientists, that this important work will continue,” says Watt-Watson.