The School was saddened to learn of the death of Christine Ann Salton, MSN’96, after a brief episode of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, in May 2023. Born in Seattle in 1947, Chris moved to Japan as a young child and did most of her schooling in Yokahama before starting university in San Francisco and then relocating to Canada to complete a BA in English at UBC. Over the subsequent years, she obtained an RN diploma from BCIT and began what would be a 40-year nursing career.
Initially a floor nurse at the BC Cancer Agency, Chris entered the UBC School of Nursing graduate program, completing her MSN with a research-based thesis entitled “Preferences for intervention among cancer patients receiving radiotherapy for the first time” under the supervision of then School Director, Dr. Marilyn Willman. On the basis of her clinical expertise and the skills obtained during her MSN degree program, Chris became a Clinical Nurse Specialist at BC Cancer and was actively involved in a number of research projects and clinical initiatives in that context.
She ultimately moved on to become a Case Manager at Evergreen Health Unit and spent the later years of her career in central intake at Pacific Spirit Health Unit. As her family wrote in an obituary, “She was a great advocate for the physical and emotional needs of her patients all through her career. She knew the way the system worked, or could be made to work if one was pleasant, polite, and persistent.”