UVU Nursing Research Conference (3 Hours)

The keynote speaker at the UVU Nursing Research Conference was Dr. Lauren Clark who is a professor of nursing at the University of Utah. She discussed how research can break down barriers to humanized care. According to Dr. Clark, the three barriers to humanized care are perverse policies, technophilia, and biases by nurses. Research helps nurses overcome these barriers. She gave examples of three works that address biases by nurses. These works included Violence & Hope, The Hot Spotters, and Cutting for Stone. This keynote address made me excited about nursing research and how it can humanize the care I give to my patients.
The first breakout session I attended was presented by Dianne McAdams-Jones, EdD, RN. She discussed the benefits of using a human simulator in a nursing program. A human simulator was used in the presentation. Different scenarios were presented using the human simulator. The human simulator was able to talk, sweat, bleed, increase heart rate, and a multitude of other performances. This session was a very informative class on how human simulators can function as an alternative to live patients for nursing students. This is beneficial, because no harm can be brought upon the human simulator.
The last breakout session I attended was presented by Dale Maughan, PhD, RN. He presented preliminary findings of Utah Valley University’s use of the admissions interviews as an admission factor to the undergraduate nursing program. At this point, the first cohort of nurses to have gone through the admission’s interviews are still in their fourth semester. It is unknown whether the use of the interviews will increase NCLEX pass rates. Different statistics were presented that showed that the interview process did effect who was accepted into the program. Some students who would have been accepted to the program without the interview process, were not accepted because of interview performance. The purpose of the interview process, according to Dale, is to allow the admissions committee a look at the caring and communicating skills the applicants possess. This interview process has been deemed beneficial and changed the admissions process from applicants just being a number on a spreadsheet. Faculty are now able to get to know applicants and put faces to names during the application process.