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Eileen Hutton (NSc’74, DSc’16) kept with the longstanding midwifery tradition today, wearing red shoes at spring convocation to receive her honorary doctorate in science.

The tradition, a way to separate from the crowd, certainly describes the work of Dr. Hutton. She’s been a leading figure in the midwifery profession for decades, playing an important role in seeking legislative recognition of the profession and bringing it into the regulatory model.

In Grant Hall, Dr. Hutton linked her life’s work back to the first woman to receive an honorary degree at Queen’s, and indeed the first in Canada, in 1897.

“I see my work as an extension of the work Lady Aberdeen did,” Dr. Hutton said Monday in her convocation address. The Countess of Aberdeen was founding president of the National Council of Women, founder of the Victorian Order of Nurses, and wife of Governor General the Earl of Aberdeen.

“She had a strong social conscience and played a significant role in health care, bringing basic care into the community and improving access in both urban and remote areas,” said Dr. Hutton, adding that Lady Aberdeen set the foundation for care for women giving birth at home.

Starting her career at Queen’s with a Bachelor of Nursing Science, Dr. Hutton went on to receive a master’s degree in nursing science and a PhD in clinical epidemiology from the University of Toronto, as well as a midwifery certificate from the Michener Institute of Applied Health Sciences. Some of her early job positions in obstetrical nursing were in small and remote communities, in Labrador and the B.C. interior.

“The nursing program at Queen’s gave me a strong foundation and well prepared me to deal with challenge. The instructors always said we should go out in pairs because the system needs change. And while I didn’t work with a Queen’s grad afterwards, that idea stayed with me – that the system needs change, and that change is possible. I think that was very formative for me,” said Dr. Hutton in a separate interview.

Dr. Hutton is currently assistant dean in the Faculty of Health Sciences and director of midwifery at McMaster University, as well as professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She has received numerous awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Ontario Midwives and the New Investigator Award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and was the first midwife to hold a professorship in the Netherlands, where she helped create educational programming to bring midwifery into university settings.

"The professorship was a big accomplishment and given that the Netherlands has a much longer and documented history of midwifery than Canada, I think it speaks to how good a job we've done here in Canada in advancing the profession and growing education and research in the field."

Her continued focus is on leading clinical studies and research, publishing widely in international journals on a variety of topics relevant to midwifery and obstetrics, including twin birth, late and early clamping of the umbilical cord in term neonates, vaginal birth after caesarean section, sterile water injections for labour pain relief, and home birth.

Being back on campus to receive the honorary degree felt surreal, said Dr. Hutton, who married a Queen’s engineer, John Hutton, Sc’72, and has an uncle, now 101 years old, who received a degree in mining engineering from Queen’s. One of her daughters (she has three children, two daughters and a son) is also a Queen’s engineer.

“It’s a great honour and privilege to be receiving an honorary degree from my alma mater. It was very exciting to open the letter that invited me to accept the degree,” she said, remembering the very bonded community Queen’s creates on campus with its many Gaelic traditions.

She added that one of the most important aspects of her Queen’s education was that it taught her how to think – to really question and analyze.

“It gave me the ability to maneuvre through a system and workplaces that change very rapidly, and to be able to do more with less.”