2024 Nursing Research Day to showcase graduate students’ thesis work

Every year since 2017, Nursing Research Day has given graduate students at UCalgary Nursing a chance to share their thesis work, hear new perspectives and to showcase nursing research. This year, the event will be held virtually March 7 from 1:30 pm to 4 p.m. 

There will be a total of eight graduate students who are doing poster and oral presentations and a three-minute thesis similar in format to the UCalgary 3MT competitions. 

“Nursing Research Day is always an exciting event because we get to hear about the incredible research that our graduate students are conducting,” says Marc Hall, research specialist for UCalgary Nursing who organizes the event with the Nursing Research Office.

“It is a great opportunity for our Faculty community to come together and celebrate their hard work.”

Dr. Nancy Moules, UCalgary Nursing associate dean (research), adds, “the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Calgary conducts outstanding and award-winning research. Integral to this success is the research conducted by our graduate students who themselves are award- winning scholars involved in original and significant studies that hold the potential to make a difference in lives and practices. This day is a celebration and showcasing of work that matters.”

2024 Presenters

Lisa Alphonsus
The Experience of Emergency Department Nurses During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Lisa Alphonsus is a registered nurse, actively practicing in emergency departments for the past 10 years in both a rural and urban setting. She is completing her Master of Nursing thesis degree studying the experience of emergency nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“There is limited qualitative research on emergency nurses' experience that spans the entirety of the pandemic, particularly in the third year,” she writes. “This research allows us to see its long-term effects demonstrating that emergency nurses experienced the pandemic  as getting worse over time.”

Sandra Carless-Kane
Making Sense of Praxis in an Evolving Clinical Context

Sandra Carless-Kane is a fourth-year doctoral candidate with over 10 years experience in rural acute and community nursing practice. Her teaching experience includes over 20 years of classroom, nursing lab, and clinical instruction in practical nurse and undergraduate nursing programs. Her research focuses on nursing students' learning experiences, with a special interest in learning transfer between classroom and clinical practice. 

“Understanding how nursing students transfer learning into clinical practice is essential in the development of well-prepared and knowledgeable nurses who can meet the increasing demands of nursing practice,” she writes. 

Sara Dolan
Interprofessional socialization of healthcare educators in the practice setting: A mixed methods study

Sara Dolan is a nursing PhD candidate whose doctoral work focuses on interprofessional socialization of healthcare educators. In addition to her doctoral studies, Sara works with the eSIM provincial simulation program as a research student assisting in program evaluation of simulation initiatives across the province. 

The purpose of this study was to examine healthcare educators' perceptions and experiences related to interprofessional socialization following an interprofessional training.

Cathy Jimin Lee
Assessing Metacognition in Undergraduate Nursing Students: A Proposed Scoping Review

Cathy Lee is working on her master's in the graduate program. An RN since 2020, she has worked in acute care areas including internal medicine, COVID, and pulmonary, and now works on the Burns, Plastics & Head/Neck Surgeries unit. Passionate about education, her thesis focus is on metacognition and improving student learning, and she hopes to continue her work in education research and working closely with students.

Metacognition has been identified as an essential skill for health-care professionals, but there is inconsistency in how it is understood and assessed within undergraduate nursing education. This scoping review aims to identify the methods and instruments in the literature used to assess or measure metacognition in undergraduate nursing students between the years 2000-2023 and provide a summary of how metacognition is defined, understood, and operationalized within nursing education. 

Sondra Pedersen
Exploring the experience of gender diverse individuals accessing emergency healthcare services

Sondra is a first-year Master of Nursing student with eight years of experience in acute and emergency care nursing in Calgary. She is using a narrative inquiry approach to explore the experience of gender diverse individuals accessing emergency health care in Alberta with the hope that this knowledge can be used to argue for, enter into, and develop systems and practice related initiatives. 

The overall goal is to understand the stressors faced by gender diverse people and ways that emergency room settings and staff members can improve the experience of an emergency room visit for those identifying as gender diverse.  More knowledge will contribute to emergency care services that are safe and accessible to everyone.

Harroop Sharda
Exploring Academic Success in Non-University-Affiliated Polytechnic Nursing Programs         

Harroop is a seasoned registered nurse with 22 years of experience spanning mental health, paediatrics, community health and academia and is a doctoral student. Academic achievement by students in polytechnic nursing programs is the focus of Harroop's PhD study. Through this research, she aims to develop a theory to enhance equity and inclusion in undergraduate nursing education.

She will  explore the strategies and processes utilized by final-year undergraduate nursing students in non-university-affiliated polytechnic programs to achieve academic success. 

Katherine Stelfox
Understanding healthcare aides' experiences with death and dying in the context of the coronavirus pandemic

Katherine Stelfox is a doctoral candidate at UCalgary Nursing. Her research centres around older adults and long-term care (LTC). Katherine is an instructor for Nunavut Arctic College, where she teaches nursing research and gerontological nursing. She has a diverse nursing background, having worked as a registered nurse in Nunavut and the Yukon, as well intensive care in Edmonton and LTC in Calgary. 

This research study aims to better understand how health-care aides in LTC understood their experiences of death and dying during the COVID-19 pandemic to better prepare for pandemic-level events in the future that may impede the quality of care.  

Katie Webber
Understanding Nurse-Parent Relational Complexity Within Paediatric Oncology Contexts

Katie Webber began her work as a paediatric oncology nurse in 2011 and she is currently in the doctoral program. Her research is focused on understanding relational complexity in parent-nurse relationships within paediatric oncology contexts. Katie hopes that her research will contribute to improving psychosocial supports for parents of children diagnosed with cancer and the nurses who care for these families.