March 2025 Featured NP – Dr. Minna Miller
Dr. Minna Miller was the recipient of the 2024 NPAC NP Award of Excellence for British Columbia. She is an expert clinician with a subspecialty practice in respirology at the BC Children’s Hospital asthma clinic. She developed a virtual health toolkit for the asthma clinic team during the onset of COVID -19 pandemic, facilitating a seamless transition from in-person clinic visits to virtual health visits. She is a sought after speaker on pediatric asthma related topics and has given numerous workshops and seminars. Minna has made a significant contribution to the standardization of pediatric asthma care, diagnosis, management and education. From the initial meetings to develop BC’s first pediatric asthma guidelines and their evaluation and dissemination nearly a decade ago, to the review and revision of the Child Health BC Asthma guidelines for emergency/urgent care, the review and revision of the UBC CPD course on Pediatric asthma management.
As a leader, Minna is respected locally and globally with a focus on advancing the NP profession. She was the first NP community of practice lead at the Provincial Health Services Authority in 2014 with oversight of 60 NPs and new NP role implementation and development across specialties and sub-specialties within the health authority. She served a term as Vice-Chair of the NP standards committee of the regulatory college. During her term the NP scope of practice was updated, removing multiple barriers to practice and incorporating the prescribing of controlled drugs and substances and MAiD into the SoP while also facilitating the regulation for the introduction of a new neonatal NP role into BC. As the first DNP prepared NP in the greater Vancouver area, she was invited to participate on numerous Ministry of Health expert panels including development of an NP privileging dictionary which made it possible for NPs to become part of medical staff with admit/discharge privileges. She was on the working group developing the BC Primary Care Patient Experience Survey. On the National front she is the NP representative on the Steering Committee for Choose Wisely Canada (Pediatrics) and was invited to the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing Summit in October 2024 to develop guiding principles for NP education in specialty practice in light of recent changes in NP education and regulation in Canada.
On the international front Dr. Miller is the first Canadian NP inducted as a fellow into the American Association Nurse Practitioners, and serves on it’s International Committee and as a mentor to NPs and nurse leaders from Kenya, Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom. Since 2014 she has been actively involved with the ICN NP/APN Network, as co-chair of Health Policy subgroup, as project coordinator for the network and most recently as conference coordinator.
Minna’s achievements don’t stop there! She is on three international research teams with an interest in Advanced Practice Nurse education, regulation, practice and evaluation globally, with numerous presentations, publications including book chapters. At PHSA she chairs the NP department’s research and quality improvement committee with funding for mixed methods research study over three years to describe and evaluate NP workforce and related outcomes across settings and specialties.