Laurier welcomes bestselling author Dr. Jillian Horton for lecture on healthcare worker burnout

Oct. 9, 2024
For Immediate Release

BRANTFORD — Dr. Jillian Horton will share her insights as a frontline healthcare provider experiencing burnout at her upcoming lecture, “We Are Not All Perfectly Fine: Storytelling as Strategy to Change Medical Culture.” The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. on Wilfrid Laurier University's Brantford campus.

Horton is an associate professor of internal medicine at Manitoba’s Health Sciences Centre and the University of Manitoba whose writing about medicine and medical culture appears regularly in the L.A. Times, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Maclean’s. 

In 2021, her first full-length book, We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing, was a national bestseller. It won Laurier’s prestigious Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and is currently being adapted as a television series.

“While Dr. Horton is by no means the only frontline healthcare provider to suffer from burnout, she took a remarkable next step, which was writing about this process – detailing a moment that we often collectively ask caregivers to hide,” said Kate Rossiter, associate professor of Health Studies within Laurier’s Faculty of Human and Social Sciences. “We are thrilled to welcome her to Laurier to share her experiences and her vision for reforms that support the wellbeing of healthcare workers across Canada.”

Named a “leading medical educator” by the U.S.-based Arnold P. Gold Foundation, Horton was awarded the Gold Humanism Award by the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada in 2020 for her national contributions to compassion in clinical care and her leadership in the field of humanities in medical education. She is a graduate of McMaster University’s school of medicine and completed her residency and fellowship in general internal medicine at the University of Toronto.

The day after her lecture, Horton will be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree at Laurier’s Brantford campus fall convocation ceremony.

Horton’s lecture takes place Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. in Room RCW002 at the Research and Academic Centre West (150 Dalhousie St.) on Laurier’s Brantford campus. All are welcome to attend the free, public event and registration is not required.