Northern Health nursing trailblazer leaves legacy with UNBC bursary

Shanda Rojas became one of the first nurse practitioners in Northern BC and dedicated her career to helping the North’s marginalized populations.

From pregnancy outreach work to creating individual care plans for people in smaller communities, Rojas used each day of her nursing career to set the standard of care in Northern BC a little higher.

But when Rojas was diagnosed with a brain tumour two years ago, she decided to leave her mark on Northern health care one more time by creating the Shanda Rojas Legacy Bursary.

Rojas started working after graduating from CNC with a Diploma in Nursing and then completing a Bachelor of Science from UNBC.

She used her degree to dive into different areas of community nursing in the North including pregnancy outreach and public health nursing.

After going back to school to get a Master’s degree, she returned to the workforce where she realized the opportunity she had to help people living in remote Indigenous communities.

In 2010, Rojas set up her own practice and worked directly with five First Nations communities and became their primary care providers.

While working in the North, Rojas would go beyond her work as a nurse, as she was given plenty of opportunities to set the bar a little higher for Northern nurses, and she did.

“Working in smaller communities you really foster and build relationships that go far beyond the definition of a Nurse Practitioner, you can really make a huge difference in those people’s lives,” she explained.

For the next decade, she travelled among the communities and provided whatever health care services were needed, during her spare time she worked as an Adjunct Professor at UNBC’s School of Nursing.

“What I love about working as a nurse in the north is that it gave me the ability to work outside the box, and sometimes working outside the box just means helping somebody find food,” Rojas explained.

“I know she has a ton of patients that are very endeared to her that found a lot of not only physical help but mental and emotional strength from being in her care,” added Matteo, Rojas’ son.

Her extremely impactful work came to an end in 2019, when she was diagnosed with a brain tumour that would be cutting her extraordinary life short.

It was then she decided to create the $1,000 bursary, which will be offered annually to a full or part-time UNBC student enrolled in the Family Nurse Practitioner program.

Preference for the bursary will be given to students hoping to work with the North’s marginalized population, single parents and widowed students, as Rojas lost her husband years ago.

She says the bursary should be awarded to someone who has compassion that will make a difference by going beyond their job description as a nurse to help those in need.

Rojas offered a few pieces of advice for those embarking on a nursing career in Northern BC.

“It’s not always possible to do everything because there’s just so much to be done,” she explained, “people also need to learn to think outside the box in order to get things done that normally don’t fit inside the box, they need to learn to be flexible and to value little things.”

She adds something as simple as making sure someone gets proper foot care could prevent them from a whole life of pain.