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.  

 

Desiree West

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Essay 1:  This year I chose to take the new ideas and concepts I heard and observed for initial and annual competency validation and assessment back to my institution and presented my proposal for change to current practice. Our leaders and service line directors were not only willing to change our current practice, but are excited to do so and review feedback from frontline staff. I plan to continue that momentum for change after the 2025 conference, and assess where updates and changes can be made at my institution. This conference affords me the resources and tools to continue to impact change. My goal for 2025 is to identify opportunities to engage new graduate nurses and reinforce retention within our cancer service line. The abstracts, posters, and discussions presented at ONS Congress set the foundation for me to continue assessing where change can be implemented and assessed. There is huge potential for sharing these topics with my RNs, for example journal club. This knowledge sharing can spark an idea to implement a similar project on our units. The leaders of my service line are receptive to the proposals for updates and change, especially in how we onboard, train, and educate new staff, and how to best implement continuing education related to our specialty.

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Essay 2: As the clinical nurse educator for inpatient hematology oncology, evidence based practice, quality improvement, and updates to practice and education are vital components of my job. The knowledge gained during this immersive experience allows me to educate staff in new ways, improve our practice, and keep nurses engaged in their role. By attending Congress last year as a 1st time attendee, I was able to incorporate some of the experiences and ideas from oral and poster presentations directly into our practice this year. For example, our annual competency program is totally revised and updated this calendar year as a direct result of the takeaways from this year?s conference. I am hopeful that continued attendance allows me to bring back new ideas again this year to implement into our next calendar year. Because I was able to bring back a lot of new ideas and show the impact of what other institutions were doing, leadership was more open to new ideas and concepts in RN education and orientation/ onboarding. The networking that this conference has opened up to me has also been key in collaboration and knowledge sharing with likeminded leaders and nurses. The ability to meet RNs from other institutions provides a more robust network of RNs and leaders to collaborate with. I found that many are willing to share ideas, discuss what has worked and the challenges they have faced when implementing new concepts and ideas, and many are willing to be a continuous resources for information sharing.

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Essay 3: Attending ONS Congress this year as a first time attendee opened my eyes to a whole new level of idea and knowledge sharing. I was also selected as a podium speaker from the abstract I submitted. As I continue to grow in my current role, I plan to submit additional abstracts to ONS for the 2025 conference and continue with publication of my work. I have already began to plan for the implementation of a more hands on and interactive annual competency program, and will role this out starting August 1st. With that, the feedback and post competency survey results will be analyzed to assess for improvements to learning and engagement. I specifically plan to submit those results to the 2025 conference. A long term goal of mine is to eventually serve on the board of our local Chicago chapter of ONS and continue to collaborate with local and national chapters. I also hope to ignite a passion for continued learning in my colleagues and peers by providing them with the new knowledge and ideas this conference provides me. I plan to continue to impact and add knowledge to practice and staff education through published work based on the projects I have and will continue to implement. By being a positive role model for EBP, QI, and continuous learning, I am hopeful that other RNs from our institution will take interest in submitting their abstracts and potentially present.

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