NP
Rosanra (Rosie) Yoon is the NP recipient of the 2024 Nursing Now Ontario Awards. With more than two decades of nursing experience and currently working as an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, Yoon’s career has focused on integrated, trauma-informed care to address individuals’ substance use, mental health and physical health. She also works part time at The Jean Tweed Centre, a non-profit agency for women overcoming substance use and mental health challenges.
Yoon was inspired to pursue nursing after witnessing the care her mother received following a mental illness diagnosis. During her undergrad at McMaster University, Yoon volunteered with a nursing outreach program that exposed her to community-based nursing with vulnerable populations. This experience shaped Yoon’s nursing career, which she describes as a “tangled ball of yarn” rather than a linear path given her work in various settings, including St. Michael’s Hospital’s inpatient psychiatry, Mount Sinai’s assertive community treatment team, St. Joseph Health Centre’s mental health and addictions program, the Toronto Centre for Substance Use in Pregnancy, and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. She met many mentors along the way who encouraged her to continue her education given her experiences with moral distress and her interest in patient-informed policies.
Yoon attained both her Master of Nursing and PhD from the University of Toronto. Her post-doc fellowship with the Mid-West Toronto Ontario Health Team allowed her to bring together her PhD work and clinical expertise to create health systems that are responsible and safe for people by working in partnership with the populations and communities she serves.
Yoon’s colleagues describe her as an “exemplary role model” who motivates students to make connections between research, policy and practice with the ultimate goal of advancing health equity.
