Dr. Lorraine Wright / www.lorrainewright.com

Dr. Lorraine M. Wright is an author, international lecturer, consultant, and marriage and family therapist. She is also Professor Emeritus of Nursing, at the University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada where established the Family Nursing Unit within the Faculty of Nursing where she held the position of Director for 20 years.

Lorraine focuses her lectures, clinical practice and research on illness beliefs of families and health care professionals; spirituality, suffering and illness; and family interventions. She has co-developed the Illness Beliefs Model, and Calgary Family Assessment and Intervention Model. More recently, she has developed the Trinity Model.

Lorraine just completed her seventh and eighth books Beliefs and Illness: A Model for Healing 2009; and Nurses and Families: A Guide to Family Assessment and Intervention 5th Ed (2009). Dr. Wright has also authored Spirituality, Suffering, and Illness: Ideas for Healing, 2005 and co-authored Nurses and Families: A Guide to Family Assessment and Interventions (5th Ed.) 2009. Dr. Wright has written a total of 8 books with approximately 70 articles, chapters, and book reviews.

Lorraine is a much sought after national and international speaker who has given over 300 presentations at national and international family health, family nursing, family therapy, and spirituality and health conferences.

Presently, Dr. Wright serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Family Nursing; and Advisory Editor of the journals Families, Systems and Health; and Contemporary Family Therapy: An International Journal. Additionally, Lorraine is also a member of the Canadian Nurses Association, American Academy of Family Therapy, and is an approved Supervisor, Fellow, and Clinical Member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy.

Dr. Janice M. Bell / www.janicembell.com

Dr. Janice Bell is a nurse educator and registered psychologist who provides international leadership in the field of Family Health with a particular focus on Family Systems Nursing theory, practice, and research. She is the founding Editor of the Journal of Family Nursing and served as the Director of the Family Nursing Unit, University of Calgary from 2002-2007.

Dr. Bell’s research and clinical scholarship focuses on increasing health care professionals’ confidence and competence in collaborating with families experiencing serious illness. One of her research team’s projects, “Understanding the process of therapeutic change in Family Systems Nursing Practice”, resulted in the development of the Illness Beliefs Model to guide practice with families. Dr. Bell and her colleagues have taught this model to thousands of practicing health care professionals, graduate students, and academics in Canada, United States, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Brazil, Portugal, and Poland.

Dr. Bell currently holds an Adjunct Professor position with the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. She and Dr. Lorraine Wright enjoy co-teaching the Family Nursing Externship workshop focused on their “Calgary practice models” and will be offering their intensive Externship workshop, including the newly revised Illness Beliefs Model, in Kelowna, British Columbia in the fall of 2009 and in the spring of 2010 (see their websites for more information).