2024 Nursing Conference Grant Winning Essays

The questions for this year’s application cycle were as follows: 

1. Please describe how you will share what you learn at this conference with colleagues. 

2. How will you incorporate what you learn from this educational offering into your practice? 

3. How will this conference advance your long-term career goals (beyond the attainment of continuing education hour requirements)? 

 

Essays were lightly edited for grammar, flow, and readability.  

 

Kathleen Venant

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Essay 1:  I am thankful to lead a team of three Clinical Supervisors. Their support to me is what keeps me going and our teammates as well. As a leadership team of four, we meet monthly on campus. During our meetings I always provide them a copy of the agenda and/or assign a short and small read in preparation of meeting. Our monthly meetings provides us an opportunity to have collaborative discussions, strategize how to improve our processes, better support each other, our teammates, ensure our communication is synchronized, share feedback from teammates, consider our overall efficiency and organization. Most importantly it's an opportunity for me to develop them as leaders. The SPN annual conference is April 17th - April 19th 2024 and I already scheduled our leadership meeting to occur on Thursday, April 25th, 2024 where I can share with the clinical supervisors the overall experience from my first SPN conference, discuss evidence practices learned from various sessions, conversations via networking, gather their thoughts on how we could implement/adjust our practices to better enforce more evidence base practices discovered at the conference. In addition, I plan share my overall experience during our teams monthly Shared Governance/Team meeting for the month of May as well as highlight a spot from the conference during our monthly Nurse Manger meeting in May. I hope my experience from the conference will promote my colleagues and peers to join SPN and attend a future conference.

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Essay 2: After being a pediatric nurse for eight years, I've finally joined the Society Of Pediatric Nurses and the local chapter this year. This will be my first SPN conference and I'm beyond excited for the opportunity to further advance myself personally and professionally as a DAISY Nurse Leader Recipient. The SPN annual conference objective for the 2024 year is for participants to gain knowledge of at least one evidence based practice that they will implement in their practice setting. My objective as a nurse manager is to focus on sessions dedicated toward leadership. The sessions I plan to attend are; 'Driving Team Member Engagement Through Competition', PICU Safety Rounds: Blazing The Trail Back to High-Quality Patient Care, A Nursing Lead Quality Improvement Approach to Reduce Pediatric Adverse Drug Effects, Enhancing Healthcare Collaboration & Patient Care, Peer-to-Peer Support Training, Empower Unit Council Leaders to Engage ALL Nurses in Professional Governance, I Feel Hopeful: A Leadership Initiative to Support Pediatric Nurses, Nurse Manager Mindfulness Creates a Resilient Team, Discussion on Pediatric Float Pool Orientation and Post COVID19 Staffing, and Overcoming Obstacles to Certification through a Solution-Orientation Gamified Campaign. I'm confident I will leave the conference with more than just one evidence based practice to incorporate into my practice.

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Essay 3: I know attending the SPN conference will satisfy my nursing cup just as much as having become a DAISY Nurse Leader. I love an opportunity to further grow and develop myself as a leader, which is an ongoing work in progress. As a nurse manager my goal is to lead at a heighten level of excellence. I know attending the SPN conference, being in the presence of great individuals, leaders, and organizations will inspire and motivate me to positively stretch myself as a leader. My goal as a leader is to create engaged teammates, confident teammates and individuals, promote autonomy, continue to foster team work, focus on retention, and explore opportunities to maximize technology. From the conference agenda I plan to attend sessions with a leadership focus that will support my goals outlined. I also plan to network and engage in conversations that will spark opportunities where I can improve as a leader and explore where evidence base practice could be implemented and beneficial to myself, teammates, peers, and/or the organization. I have been a pediatric nurse eight years and now a of pediatric nurse manager five of those eight years and now a new member of SPN. My goal is to exemplify and be the change I promote to my teammates by practicing the professional development in myself that I encourage my teammates to pursue.

 

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