Three doctoral students from Mennonite College of Nursing participated in the University Research Symposium on April 8 at the Bone Student Center.
Dana DeShon, a student in the online doctoral nursing practice program, presented Evaluation of the Step by Step Program in a Pediatric Primary Care Setting. This scholarly project is a systematic program evaluation of the Step by Step Program to determine the feasibility of providing pedometer and evidence-based educational intervention in a group format to children, aged 10–18, in a primary care practice.
DeShon is an APN for OSF Medical Group Pediatrics in Morton. She is a certified pediatric nurse practitioner-primary care, and is also an instructional assistant professor at Mennonite College of Nursing. She anticipates graduating in December 2016.
Ph.D. in nursing student Susana Calderon.
Susana Calderon and Robyn Goetze Bradley are students in the Ph.D. in nursing program. Calderon’s poster presentation was Discovering Adolescents’ Oral Health Behavior. The purpose of her dissertation research is to discover what oral health behaviors adolescents engage in and what are the factors that influence these behaviors.
In addition to pursing her degree, Calderon is an adjunct assistant instructional professor at Mennonite College of Nursing and works part-time as an RN in the Pain Center at St. Mary’s Hospital in Decatur. She anticipates graduating in December 2016.
Robyn Goetze Bradley at the University Research Symposium.
Goetze Bradley presented a poster titled Online Scheduling and Its Relationship to Patient Satisfaction: A Comparison Between Three States in the U.S. and Canada. This was a collaborative project with Associate Professor MyoungJin Kim from Mennonite College of Nursing and Associate Professor James Wolf from the School of Information Technology. In their study, they compared the level of patient satisfaction with physicians who provide online scheduling to patient satisfaction with physicians who do not provide online scheduling.
The University Research Symposium offers an exciting opportunity for enrolled Illinois State graduate and undergraduate students to present what they have learned through their research, scholarship, and creative endeavor to a large audience in a professional setting. More than 500 graduate and undergraduate students displayed posters at this event last week, which is organized by the Graduate School.
“This is a great opportunity and experience for our students to participate in this event,” said Caroline Mallory, associate dean for research at Mennonite College of Nursing. “Graduate students receive individualized attention from their faculty advisors in order to prepare them to become experts in their area of scholarship.”
