https://www.infirmiere-canadienne.com/blogs/ic-contenu/2026/07/06/barbara-campbell-trouver-sa-voix
Barbara Campbell views Alberta Association of Nurses’ new relationship with CNA as strengthening support and resources for profession
By Laura Eggertson
July 6, 2026
Courtesy of Barbara Campbell
“Your voice is through your association,” says Barbara Campbell, who retired earlier this year after 40 years of nursing practice. “I believe nurses can find support from their provincial and national association. There’s strength in numbers.” The realization that self-advocacy is critical for a nurse’s health and wellness is the driving force behind Campbell’s support for the Alberta Association of Nurses’ new relationship with the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA).
Editor’s note: This article deals with trauma and mentions suicide. If you are having thoughts of self-harm or suicide, please reach out for supportive, non-judgmental help at 9-8-8, Canada’s Suicide Crisis Helpline.
The first time Barbara Campbell stayed silent was the day her head nurse told her that Campbell’s close friend and fellow nurse had died the night before at the hands of a violent husband.
It was July 28, 1986, and Campbell was a new nursing graduate, unaccustomed to the trauma that is often a hallmark of a nurse’s job.
She absorbed the news and returned to her duties in the recovery room at the Winnipeg hospital she was working in.
“I didn’t say a word,” she remembers. “I thought my responsibility, first and always, was to my job.”
Campbell was particularly gutted by her friend Alice Jones’s murder because the night before she died, Jones had asked if she could come to Campbell’s house.
Tired, and worried that her house was untidy, Campbell said “No.”
The second time she kept quiet was during the Manitoba nurses’ strike in 1990-1991. Campbell, who had started working at another hospital, was designated an essential worker. She was required to stay on the job while her colleagues walked the picket line.
One night, as she struggled to care for 31 patients, two people on her shift died.
“I will never forget those two men,” she says.
The third time Campbell failed to speak up was the day she fell asleep at the wheel, exhausted after an overnight shift working in oncology at St. Boniface Hospital during the strike. She crashed into a ditch, narrowly avoiding a head-on crash with an oncoming milk delivery truck.
Miraculously unhurt, Campbell went home, cared for her children, slept a few hours and went to her next shift.
The fourth time Campbell hid her pain was after she moved to Calgary and was working as a pediatric oncology nurse. The family of a boy she’d grown close to during his treatments asked her to support them in their home as the four-year-old died.
Despite knowing that she was struggling emotionally after the child’s death, Campbell returned to work as if nothing had happened.
Buried trauma
Burying the accumulated trauma led Campbell into an eating addiction. By the end of 2010, she felt on the brink of suicide.
“My way of coping with all of this was eating,” she says. “We know so much more about neuroscience and sugar addiction now, but when I was going through it, I thought I was losing my mind. It was the only way I could cope.”
Only after joining a 12-step recovery in March 2011 did Campbell acknowledge the effects of the trauma she had experienced and recognize the importance of advocating for herself.
“That healing,” she says, is “when I really woke up and started talking about what happened in my younger years as a nurse.”
Supportive communities
The realization that self-advocacy is critical for a nurse’s health and wellness is the driving force behind Campbell’s support for the Alberta Association of Nurses’ new relationship with the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA).
In May 2025, CNA announced new membership models and the Alberta Association of Nurses (AAN) became its inaugural Organizational Affiliate. Members of AAN will now automatically become members of CNA as well, with access to the benefits of professional development opportunities, advocacy efforts, and supportive national practice communities.
Campbell, now 62, hopes the new relationship between the two associations will inspire more Alberta nurses to join the associations. They place nurses’ needs at the forefront of their mandate and give members a safe space to network, learn, and advocate, she says.
Campbell was a lifelong union member and spent 10 years as a union executive, most recently as a district representative for the United Nurses of Alberta. Her union does its best to support members suffering from burnout and compassion fatigue, but unions are primarily focused on collective bargaining, their main mandate, she says.
Associations are best placed to deliver the support and the resources nurses need to thrive, she says.
“Your voice is through your association,” says Campbell, who retired earlier this year after 40 years of nursing practice. “I believe nurses can find support from their provincial and national association. There’s strength in numbers.”
In examining her own past throughout her recovery, Campbell has come to understand her behaviour in the context of a workplace and professional culture that devalued nurses’ individual needs.
As a result, many nurses feel burned out, exhausted, and unable to communicate on their own behalf, she says. They may have difficulty setting boundaries and then feel guilty about that, she adds.
“Why do we feel so unable to use our voice when we are so capable of using it on behalf of others?” she asks.
“We advocate for our patients, we advocate in a research place, we advocate for health and safety, and we are very articulate and professional people. But for ourselves, we lose it.”
Part of the problem, Campbell believes, is a lack of education during nursing school about how to communicate concerns to senior managers, colleagues, and how to speak up for oneself.
“You have to find your voice,” she says.
‘Dial in’ to associations
Although every nurse needs to advocate for themselves, Campbell stresses, associations can identify common issues and suggest solutions.
“I don’t think associations will fix individuals, but I think associations have a responsibility to recognize themes and to find and offer education and benefits to the members of those associations so that members can feel validated and then do their own work to get out of their conundrum,” she says.
“I hope that they [nurses] really dial in to their associations, both provincial and national, because I do believe that that’s where their support is going to be.”
There are more resources available now for nurses who have experienced trauma than there were when she was starting her career, Campbell acknowledges. She facilitated an online mindfulness course for nurses during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example.
But too often, the support programs available in the workplace fail to accommodate the realities of nursing shifts or the pace, which makes people unable to take advantage of lunch-hour workshops or debriefs that may occur when they are off.
In her case, it was only when a colleague shared her own struggles with eating and yo-yo dieting that Campbell found the strength to attend a meeting and acknowledge her addiction.
Thoughts of her children kept her from acting on her suicidal thoughts, and as she began to embrace recovery, her yoga, meditation, and life-coaching practices convinced her of the importance of incorporating wellness into everyday life.
‘On a mission’ to fix problems
Campbell starts each morning by lighting a candle, writing in her journal, and praying. She tries to go for a daily walk, is learning pickleball, spends time with her four children and six grandchildren, and volunteers with her husband Rick at their church.
Campbell, whose daughter is also a nurse, has watched younger nurses and new graduates suffer from sleeplessness and anxiety because of stress brought on by inadequate staffing and increased demands.
Early this year, Campbell retired from her job at Calgary’s South Health Campus as an infusion nurse supporting people with cancer and autoimmune diseases. She plans to spend her retirement exploring the reasons nurses struggle to speak up for themselves and finding ways to help them prioritize wellness and find joy in the workplace.
“I am on a mission to fix these problems, because I know how catastrophic those things were in my life, and they affected my relationships and my marriage, eventually,” she says.
With that in mind, Campbell is creating a course in effective communication and plans to continue her mindfulness work, as well as holding online and in-person workshops on contemplative prayer, breathwork, and yoga. These efforts are rooted in Campbell’s desire to support colleagues at all stages of their careers and to encourage open conversations about well‑being in nursing.
“I’m hoping to help my colleagues,” she says. “I’m passionate about wellness for everybody, but I’m a nurse, and so I care about my colleagues near and far.”
Laura Eggertson is a freelance journalist based in Wolfville, N.S.
#profiles
#nurses-health-and-well-being
#advocacy
#mental-health
#leadership
#professional-development
#recruitment-and-retention