Bloomberg Nursing students take home five STTI awards

31 May 2012

We are pleased to announce five of Bloomberg Nursing’s students received Sigma Theta Tau International Lambda Pi-At-Large Chapter awards. Nominated for their outstanding achievements, these recipients exemplify each of the winning categories.

Bridget Doan won the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Practice by an Undergraduate Student. She recently completed her clinical placement at SickKids in the Department of Psychiatry’s Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) Clinic. While there she embraced the principles of evidence-based practice, making deliberate efforts to ensure she was guided by the most appropriate evidence for the clinical scenario and client circumstance. In this vein, Doan helped create linkages between the OCD clinic and the clients’ schools, working with parents and teachers to promote collaborative planning for the home and school contexts in a wraparound effort to improve the daily functioning of adolescents with OCD.

Nicole Harada won the President’s Award for Outstanding Leadership by an Undergraduate Student. She is the Athletics Representative for the Nursing Undergraduate Society (NUS), organizing and promoting intramural fitness teams and consistently giving feedback to programmers. Her most notable effort has been around a wellness initiative at the Faculty that encourages healthy living among her fellow students. Harada organized a mindfulness meditation workshop, drop-in yoga and a lunch-hour Wellness Fair. Due to her exceptional efforts, NUS has decided to add the new role of Wellness Representative to their positions for the coming year.

Rita Wong won the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Practice by a Student in the Baccalaureate Program. She demonstrated a strong motivation to improve knowledge and practice surrounding issues of moral stress in nursing palliative end-of-life care. She conducted a literature review exploring nurses’ experiences with patients and their families in intensive care units, quickly developing strategies to search multiple health care databases. Wong’s work exhibited critical reasoning and judgement that was integral to the project’s success and expressed insightful dialogue about a desire to pursue clinical practice in intensive care units.

Kevin Zizzo won the Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Student in the Primary Care or Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Program. A proven multi-tasker, he is a staff nurse in paediatric emergency medicine at SickKids, recently concluded his final semester in the Master of Nursing/Nurse Practitioner – Paediatrics program, and was concurrently completing an NP Diploma in Anaesthesia Care. Zizzo entered graduate school with a clear drive to shape the delivery of nursing care for children undergoing traumatic medical experiences and their families, demonstrating evidence of current and future success in promoting nursing excellence in this specialty.

Veronique Boscart won the Award for an Outstanding PhD Thesis. Her doctoral thesis, supervised by Dean Emeritus Dorothy Pringle, answered the question, “What can nurses do to enhance the quality of daily life of people who live their lives in a chronic care setting?” She investigated the relationships patients have with members of the nursing staff, including non-professional staff, as key to improving their lives. Boscart undertook a large quantitative study that included developing two scales to examine what patients value and whether their experiences live up to their expectations. She has extensive clinical experience and considerable grounding in philosophy, research design and statistics from her graduate work in Belgium.

Congratulations to all the winners!