Krystina Lewis
Krystina Lewis
Associate professor

2018: PhD, University of Ottawa
2013: MSc, Nursing, University of Victoria
2007: BSc, Nursing, Queen’s University

Room
LEE 420C


Biography

Professor Krystina Lewis is a nurse and researcher at the University of Ottawa’s School of Nursing and is the co-scientific director of the Patient Decision Aids Research Group. She is committed to research focused on strengthening patient and family engagement in health decisions: from decisions about their own care to shaping more integrated, people-centred health-care systems. She advances this work at the intersection of cardiovascular and brain health, shared decision-making, knowledge mobilization, and health services research, with broader application to other complex health conditions. Her research draws on research co-production and implementation science approaches to bridge evidence, practice, and the lived experiences of patients and families.

Professor Lewis is not currently accepting new students for thesis supervision.

Research interests

  • Cardiovascular nursing
  • Integrated care
  • Shared decision-making
  • Patient decision aids and decision coaching
  • Patient and family engagement 
  • Research co-production
  • Knowledge mobilization

Research

Professor Lewis holds a Heart & Stroke New Investigator Award (2024–2027), and her research has also been supported by the Canadian Cardiovascular Society, CANet, the Heart & Stroke Foundation, Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the Canada First Research Excellence Fund via the Brain-Heart Interconnectome. She completed her PhD in nursing at uOttawa with support from a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Fellowship Award, and received the Governor General’s Gold Medal for outstanding dissertation in medicine, health sciences and interdisciplinary studies. In 2024, she was named Early Career Researcher of the Year by the Faculty of Health Sciences at uOttawa. 

Professor Lewis maintains Canadian Nurses Association certification in cardiovascular nursing, and serves on the board of the Canadian Council of Cardiovascular Nurses. Internationally, she is member of the steering committee of the International Patient Decision Aids Standards (IPDAS) Collaboration and co-leads the Decision Coaching Special Interest Group of the International Shared Decision-Making Society.

Ultimately, Professor Lewis aims to advance health care that is grounded in human connection, empathy and compassion, where people are meaningfully engaged in decisions about their health and in the systems in which they receive care, and where they feel heard and know that their voices matter.

Publications

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