https://www.infirmiere-canadienne.com/blogs/ic-contenu/2025/07/28/presidente-de-laiic-kimberly-leblanc
Kimberly LeBlanc maintains practice as a specialist in wound, ostomy and continence care to help people ‘take control of their own lives again’
By Laura Eggertson
July 28, 2025
Dr. Kimberly LeBlanc, president of the Canadian Nurses Association, says, “The bulk of our work right now is being done behind the scenes, to make sure we have an inclusive board that represents all categories of nursing, but is also skills-based, in order to move CNA forward.”
Dr. Kimberly LeBlanc has a vision for the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA).
As its president since June 2024, she’s dedicated to leading a new governance model that will restructure and modernize the national nursing organization, to ensure it represents the reality of the nursing landscape in Canada today.
“The bulk of our work right now is being done behind the scenes, to make sure we have an inclusive board that represents all categories of nursing, but is also skills-based, in order to move CNA forward,” says LeBlanc.
Until 2018, CNA board members were represented by registered nurses or nurse practitioners only. “Due to the strategic foresight of my predecessors, CNA membership was expanded to be all-inclusive and reflect the diverse roles of all nurses within the Canadian health-care system,” LeBlanc says.
Under LeBlanc’s tenure, the organization has worked hard to ensure its board consists of culturally diverse members from across Canada who represent licensed or registered practical nurses, registered nurses, registered psychiatric nurses, and nurse practitioners —– all nurses with critical roles to play in Canada’s health-care system.
The skills-based board she leads is working quietly, she says, to “systematically and purposefully” rewrite its bylaws and modernize its governance structure so the organization will be sustainable.
“If we’re going to represent nursing in Canada, then we need to make sure that our board reflects nurses in Canada,” LeBlanc says. “Nurses in Canada are very diverse. It’s important for nurses and for the public to understand that we are all nurses and we are all working towards improving the social determinants of health for Canadians.” The amplification of the nursing expertise and experience on the board with other professionals (e.g., accounting, business operations), people with lived or living experience, and public representatives will also be part of the new governance model.
Dismantle mobility barriers
High on the list of advocacy issues that CNA is addressing is the need to dismantle barriers to labour mobility within Canada and for nurses to be allowed to work to their full legislated scope of practice. LeBlanc, who grew up in Saint John, NB, before moving to Montreal to study nursing at McGill University, knows members would like to see pan-Canadian harmonization for nursing regulation, something she knows from her own experience would benefit both nurses and the health-care system.
In her own practice as a specialist in wound, ostomy and continence care, for example, LeBlanc must meet education and registration requirements and pay fees to the College of Nurses of Ontario and the Ordre des infirmières et infirmiers du Québec to work in both provinces.
“Right now, it’s cost-prohibitive for nurses,” she says.
There is significant variation across regulatory colleges in recognizing the credentials of internationally educated nurses, she points out, depending on which province or territory they want to work in.
These restrictions on nurses’ mobility have not kept pace with urgent health-care needs, she adds.
“If there’s anything the COVID-19 pandemic and the forest fires have taught us, it’s the importance of mobility for nurses,” LeBlanc says.
Under her leadership, CNA is also continuing to advocate for the protection of universal health care and for the role of the chief nursing officer of Canada, a role that Dr. Leigh Chapman holds.
“It’s so important to have a national nurse at that level,” LeBlanc says.
Political advocacy is new to LeBlanc, who is a clinician at heart, she says. Patient advocacy, on the other hand, is her forté. In addition to her CNA work, she works as a consultant to the long-term care sector, coaching staff to prevent and manage wounds, continence and ostomies. Once a month, she also runs a wound, ostomy and continence clinic. She works with community hospitals as requested.
Running the clinic is one of the most rewarding roles LeBlanc has ever undertaken.
People who live with an ostomy often lead restricted lives because they are afraid of their appliances leaking during intimate moments with a partner, at work, when they are travelling, or during a social occasion, she says. Often, her patients are afraid to leave their homes.
Until they are referred to her clinic, they are unaware that nurses who are experts in ostomy care use specialized appliances, pastes, fillers, and belts to create a better seal for a patient’s ostomy, preventing leaks.
“We can make a huge impact in people’s lives,” LeBlanc says. “Every clinic, I have somebody coming in who is telling me, ‘Thank you so much — you’ve given me my life back’.”
LeBlanc, who is also the academic chair of the Wound, Ostomy and Continence Institute, owned and operated by Nurses Specialized in Wound, Ostomy and Continence Canada (NSWOCC), oversees NSWOCC’s educational programs designed to provide advanced education in wound, ostomy and continence care, including the Nurse Specialized in Wound, Ostomy, and Continence (NSWOC) program. The NSWOC program prepares registered nurses to write the CNA WOCC(C) certification exam and to take on roles as nurse specialists and the Skin Wellness Associate Nurse (SWAN) program prepares practical nurses to take on leadership roles in wound, ostomy, and continence care.
Take back control
“We really spend a lot of time around that counselling and education piece,” she says. “I love it. It’s one of the best parts of my job, getting to spend that time with those individuals and watching them take control of their own lives again.”
Most of all, she is an integral part of helping her patients understand that although the Canadian government considers having an ostomy a disability, “there’s nothing they can’t do with an ostomy that they couldn’t do before.”
LeBlanc also works with patients, nurses and continuing care staff to improve continence, another area where she has witnessed debilitating stigma. Incontinence is a taboo subject that isolates people and often pushes people into long-term care, she says.
“The reality is there are exercises and things we do to help with the management of continence for males and females,” she says. “We can retrain people’s bowels. We can put them on toileting regimes. A big part of our job is trying to reduce the stigma, so people aren’t afraid to talk about it or go in to their primary provider and talk about it.”
Nurses specialized in wound, ostomy and continence care can also teach people to strengthen their pelvic floor muscles, she adds.
Although much of her work is with older adults, LeBlanc has also collaborated with teachers and families to integrate children with continence issues or ostomies into their classrooms.
“This is where, as nurses, we can have a huge impact in improving quality of life,” LeBlanc says.
As passionate as she is about ostomy and continence care, LeBlanc is equally roused about the need for better wound care. Pressure injuries, diabetic foot ulcers, skin tears and surgical wounds are just a few of the wounds she teaches other nurses and staff to manage.
These wounds are frequently mismanaged, she says, and become chronic, complex wounds that cause patients terrible pain.
“People die from wounds. If we can make sure nurses understand how to prevent them to begin with, and then how to manage them — from a clinical perspective, that’s a huge joy,” she says.
Aside from running the clinic, her other reward comes from teaching and mentoring others, inspired by the patience and thoughtful mentoring senior nurses such as the late Cathy Foster displayed when LeBlanc was starting her nursing career at the Montreal General Hospital.
In love with wound care
“When you take a wound that nobody thought was healable, and you work with staff and see them heal this wound — for me, watching other nurses fall in love with wound care is another great joy.”
Another of LeBlanc’s mentors, Helen Beath, helped LeBlanc bolster her research and critical thinking skills. Beath gave LeBlanc the confidence to pursue a master’s degree from Athabasca University at a time when she doubted her own academic ability due to her dyslexia.
“I have dyslexia, so education didn’t always come easily to me, and she really helped me with that,” LeBlanc says of Beath.
Not only did she succeed in obtaining a master’s in nursing from Athabasca University, but LeBlanc also completed a PhD from Queen’s. Early on, she vowed to pursue lifelong learning as part of her nursing career and she has an active research program and scholarly publications.
“It’s been an incredible and transformative journey, although my family has threatened me that I cannot go back to school again,” she says with a laugh.
LeBlanc’s husband, Dr. Lorne Wiesenfeld, is an emergency medicine physician, and her daughter Samantha is also a nurse, with son Bradley, a captain in the Canadian Armed Forces, the only family member to have so far resisted a health-care career.
When she is not juggling nursing advocacy and practice, LeBlanc enjoys hiking or snowshoeing in the Gatineau hills with her family, near her home in Ottawa, and alongside their Labradors, Oliver and Max.
Back in the office — and in her practice — she resumes her efforts to shape a sustainable landscape for Canadian nurses, hoping to make it easier for them to obtain more skills through the kind of lifelong learning opportunities she pursued, and to receive the encouragement she credits her mentors for giving.
“It’s something I would like to see all nurses do — find a mentor, and mentor the next generation of nurses,” she says.
Laura Eggertson is a freelance journalist based in Wolfville, N.S.
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