December 2025: Note from Executive Director

To our nursing community,

This year I had one goal: It was to learn more about leadership and become a better leader. To achieve this goal, I took many courses on leadership; engaged in a few high-profile speaking gigs about leadership; said YES to becoming the Executive Director of APNS; and achieved many other cool things through out 2025. And at the end of the year, I walk away with a deeper understanding of leadership than I started the year with.  

I have learned that leadership is not about the title. It isn’t simply a checklist of skills. Rather, leadership is an elevated state—a way of showing up that keeps you grounded, intentional, emotionally mature, and focused on what truly matters. And this is what nursing is all about.

Nursing is not only a profession of skill and compassion; it is a calling rooted in showing up in ways that keeps us grounded, intentional, emotionally mature, and focused on what truly matters. Everyday. As nurses, we are called to everyday leadership. And one of the ways we show up as leaders is through advocacy—advocating for our ourselves, our patients, for families, for communities, and for the profession itself.

But advocacy is most powerful when it is collective. One voice can raise awareness, but many voices together can move mountains. When nurses unite, we amplify the truth about what is broken, but more importantly we shed light, as agents of change, on what is possible. Think of the times when nurses have spoken out together to bring about tangible changes in working conditions, public health initiatives, scope of practice, and many other issues.

Each of these victories was not won by one nurse alone, but by the chorus of many voices rising together. Our collective voice is a force that policymakers cannot ignore, that communities can rally behind, and that can inspire future generations of nurses. It is the voice that says: we will not be silent when lives are at stake... we will not be silent when care is compromised... we will not be silent when justice is needed.

So, my charge to each and everyone of us is this: Advocacy is not an extra duty—it is woven into the very fabric of nursing. In 2026, let us show up as advocates. Use APNS as your platform, we are your association—the Association of Professional Nurses of Saskatchewan.Together, we are change makers as front-line nurses, educators, administrators, regulators, shop stewards, union reps, business owners, independent practitioners, researchers, policy-makers, you name it.

In every facet of the healthcare system, there is a nurse, playing their part to hold it all together. And in 2026, my encouragement to you is this: don’t do it alone. Don’t carry the burden of change by yourself in your little corner. Join your voice to another’s through advocacy. We are almost 17,000 nurses strong in Saskatchewan, all designations combined. Can you imagine what can do together if we did it together? 

With that said, I thank you for your courage, your compassion, and your unwavering commitment to nursing this year and I ask you to do it all over again next year...for your love of the profession and for the love of humanity!  I thank you greatly. Cheers to 2026!

Sincerely,

Delasi Essien, RN, PhD

Executive Director

Association of Professional Nurses of Saskatchewan