Ann Hilton (BSN ’68)

A graduate of the BSN program in 1968, Ann began her nursing career in Toronto as a Team Leader on a nursing research unit at Sunnybrook Hospital. She later joined the University of Toronto Faculty of Nursing. She did her masters degree at U of T and after working at the Respiratory Care Unit at Toronto General Hospital, she studied the sleep of patients in a respiratory care unit using EEG, EOG, EMG and observation for 48 continuous hours, a ground-breaking piece of work for her master’s thesis. She was then recruited to UBC as an Assistant Professor in 1974 where she continued to work until her retirement in 2005. From 1983 to 1986 she completed her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. She was promoted from Assistant to Associate to Full Professor and retired as Professor Emerita.

Throughout her career she focused on individual and family coping with life-threatening and chronic illness. Her doctoral dissertation examined the concept of uncertainty and how women with breast cancer coped with it. Her research continued to focus on coping with uncertainty. She developed and tested the Uncertainty Stress Scale, used by several researchers in their work, both in English and French. She also developed expertise in program evaluation and was a principal or co-investigator or consultant to a number of program evaluation studies. She taught courses and workshops on program evaluation. She has many peer-reviewed publications based on many provincially and nationally supported grants. For the four years prior to her retirement she was coordinator of the MSN program. She was actively involved in provincial, national and international nursing organizations, such as Sigma Theta Tau (The International Honor Society of Nurses), The Canadian Association of Nurses in Oncology (CANO), the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care (ISNCC), and the Canadian Association of Psychosocial Oncology (CAPO). While at UBC, she served on the Board of the Faculty Club and the Faculty Pension Plan.

As a child she was interested in painting and when her family were stationed in France, she took oil painting classes with a French woman artist (who did not speak English). Her focus on art gained considerable momentum after her retirement and she now spends considerable time painting. Her subject matter focuses on nature and representing that subject in expressive ways. She likes watercolour as a medium for the freedom of colours to mix and mingle to create wonderful scenarios that are both exhilarating and relaxing. She does shows and is a member of Artists in Our Midst as well as the Federation of Canadian Artists. You can see her paintings on her website: www.annhilton.com.