JULIE LORENZ
Regional Educator, Manitoba Renal Program

What her nominator said:

“Julie is passionate about quality patient care and works diligently towards promoting home modality options to encourage maximum quality of life for those facing renal replacement therapy. Her dedication to promoting home therapies is evident in her support and flexibility in providing Peritoneal Dialysis Therapy training sessions throughout the community, such as Nursing Homes, community sessions throughout the province, and individualized training for any group interested. Recently she also provided Peritoneal Dialysis Training sessions to the 4^th year Nursing students at the University of Manitoba. Julie is gifted with making the material easy to understand and interesting, thereby removing the stress of working with something new and unknown.”

About Julie:

Julie has held just about every type of nephrology nursing position there is in the program. From hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis to management, wound care and more – she has experienced a lot of aspects of the program at different locations which helps her in her regional educator role today.

“Opportunities have come up and I just jumped at them,” she explained. She was lured into nursing by a friend who promised they would take their careers to Australia. Though that plan didn’t quite come to fruition, Julie did do dialysis nursing in Saudi Arabia and England and eventually got in a trip to Australia.

She admits that she entered nursing in a sort of defiant way.

“My perception of nursing was Amy from General Hospital,” she said – admitting that during her schooling she started to think nursing was not for her. But then a comment sort of solidified her path. “After the first clinical day my instructor sat me down and said ‘well you know dear, we can’t all be nurses’.”

Julie used that as fuel to carry on which has led to 32 years of nursing so far. One of her passions is education particularly around home dialysis.

“The best part is when I’m able to get out and do education, share information either with health-care providers or the public.”

As a regional employee she sees a lot of the work happening at the various renal programs and sites across the province. She would love to see more ways to bring ideas to action across the board.

“There’s so many great ideas. There’s so many smart people in this program. If there was just the opportunities to share more or figure out some way to do that better.”