Dr. Moyra Allen

Her forward-looking vision for her profession found its expression in the McGill Model of Nursing, which she developed in the 1970s and which is now applied in health care settings throughout Canada and beyond. Allen’s view was that nurses could improve a patient's health by actively engaging the patient and his or her family in a learning process with health as its focus.

Allen was born in Toronto in 1921. She received her nursing education at the Montreal General Hospital School of Nursing and went on to receive a Bachelor of Nursing at McGill University and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago. Allen became an assistant professor at McGill’s School of Nursing in 1954, and was made associate professor four years later. She obtained a Ph.D. in education from Stanford University in 1967 before returning to Montreal to focus on nursing research and education.

In 1969, as the Director of Nursing Research at McGill, Allen founded the Nursing Papers, now called the Canadian Journal of Nursing Research. With its mandate of reporting on discoveries that resulted from nursing-related research, it was the first Canadian journal of its kind. It was during this same period, which coincided with the establishment of Medicare and an increased demand for health care services, that Allen refined her belief that nurses had a vital role to play in health care delivery. The result was that nurse training at McGill evolved and the McGill Model of Nursing was born.

In recognition of her major contributions to the health of Canadians, Allen was awarded the Jeanne Mance Award by the Canadian Nurses Association in 1979. She was appointed Acting Director of McGill’s School of Nursing in 1983, but retired a year later. Allen was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1986. In 1996, on May 2, after a lifetime of enthusiastic and imaginative service, she died in Ottawa.