2024 Nursing Conference Grant Winning Essays
The questions for this year’s application cycle were as follows:
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Please describe how you will share what you learn at this conference with colleagues.
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How will you incorporate what you learn from this educational offering into your practice?
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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.
Mary Smith
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Essay 1: I will disseminate my learning from ISPCAN to team members by writing a synopsis of daily lectures and activities. When lectures or activities are particularly relevant - they are either related to medical care or related to interfacing with child welfare - I will provide expanded documentation of what I learned. I will bring at least one new idea or innovation to propose we implement. This may be a provider or nurse led intervention. I will disseminate learning as it pertains to either nursing or home visiting to public health nurses around my state. I meet with these nurses, who work for the county and collaborate with case workers as part of their standard operating procedures, once per month to help inform their practice. I will bring at least one new idea or innovation that the consider implementing as a nurse led intervention. Finally, I will present lessons learned to nurse colleagues at Children's Hospital of Colorado. These ~100 nurse care coordinators throughout the hospital system interface with children and families who have specialty care needs. Many of these children and families have been identified as high-risk, and may have increased risk of experiencing ACES, thereby making them at increased risk of child abuse and neglect. I will bring at least one new idea for educating these nurses on caring for at-risk patients and families.
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Essay 2: International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse & Neglect is the global organization that promotes research and development of practices that promote prevention of child maltreatment. Once per year, this organization hosts a conference in a different international location to present data from around the world - so that data informs practice. Evidence-based practice can be transformative and can help prevent ongoing harms, like the harms that systemic racism and biases have on children and families. By attending ISPCAN in August 2024, I will have the opportunity to network with hundreds of professionals from around the world to learn how they are addressing the inequities of the child welfare systems they work in. I can bring this data and information back to my employer, Children's Hospital of Colorado, and the Kempe Center, to help inform and develop more comprehensive programs in the child abuse pediatrics sphere. Furthermore, I will have the opportunity to present findings and programs to public health nurses in my state, as I have a unique platform to help their leaders develop programs through a DHEI lens. As a masters-prepared forensic nurse practicing in pediatrics, I am highly qualified as an expert in the methods currently in practice in the US. Yet I realize that I can and should be learning from international colleagues that are doing similar work using different methods.
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Essay 3: I am in a unique position at both Children's Hospital of Colorado, as well as the Kempe Center. I am the only registered nurse on the Child Protection Team, the medical "spoke" of the Kempe Center as well as the medical team that diagnoses and recommends treatment when there are concerns of child abuse and neglect for a patient in the Children's Hospital system. The team also consults for a 7-state region of children. I am a forensic specialist, so have extensive training in providing trauma-informed, patient-focused, family-centered care. Nurses can and do have a huge impact on medical care, whether patients are in the hospital or in their community. I believe professionals like child welfare workers, pediatricians, courts, and law enforcement want to do what is best for children and families when there are concerns of child abuse and neglect. Nurses live at the intersection of these interactions and the medical system, and should take an active role in improving social, legal, and medical systems. As I educate myself more about how these systems work in other parts of my state, my country, and globally, I believe I can help improve these systems. And hopefully inspire other nurses to join me.
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