School of Nursing

Dr. ​Jean Marmoreo is a nurse, physician, writer, athlete, advocate, adventurer and a McMaster alumna. After graduating from McMaster’s nursing program, Dr. Marmoreo began her career as a nurse in Hamilton before serving as head nurse on the men’s unit at Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital in Toronto and then taking on the role of head nurse at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry. She then enrolled in medical school at the University of Toronto, graduating at the top of her class.

A family physician and obstetrician in Toronto until her brief retirement in 2020 – a retirement interrupted by work as a fly-in-fly-out clinician in the Northwest Territories – Dr. Marmoreo was a specialist in mid-life medicine and then end-of-life medicine. In 2016, she became one of the first practitioners in Canada to offer Medical Assistance in Dying. An author and advocate for the patients at the heart of her practice, she was a regular contributing columnist for publications including the Globe and Mail and the National Post while her series of articles titled “This is what 70 looks like” for Zoomer magazine won a Silver Award at the 2014 National Magazine Awards. Her book The New Middle Ages: Women in Midlife was published by Prentice Hall in 2002 and two decades later, Dr. Marmoreo co-authored The Last Doctor: Lessons in Living from the Front Lines of Medical Assistance in Dying. A national bestseller, that book was shortlisted for the Balsillie Prize in Public Policy. Dr. Marmoreo is also an active volunteer advocate who serves, for example, on the Clinicians Advisory Council of Dying With Dignity Canada.

An avid adventurer, Dr. Marmoreo has hiked 1,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail; trekked around the globe, including to Mount Everest base camp and, in 2019, circumnavigated the island of Manhattan by kayak. She is also an accomplished marathoner who has placed first in her age group in the Boston Marathon a record-setting five times. Fittingly, she is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.

Dr. Marmoreo’s list of honours includes McMaster’s Distinguished Alumni Award for Sciences and being named one of the 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada. When she was invested as a member of the Order of Canada, her citation read, in part, “Jean Marmoreo has touched the lives of thousands of patients at all stages of life.”