The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing will offer a conference """"""""Connecting the Dots: Geriatric Nursing, Education, and Clinical Simulation"""""""" at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel and Conference Center in Research Triangle Park in Durham North Carolina on April 2-3, 2009. This conference is cosponsored by Flinders University of South Australia. The overall aim of this conference is to broadly disseminate to stakeholders responsible for geriatric nursing care the findings from peer-reviewed poster and podium presentations on, and to showcase demonstrations of, geriatric clinical simulations using the human patient simulator and standardized patients and other technologies. A specific goal of the conference is to develop research priorities that focus on evaluation of the effectiveness of this teaching modality in changing geriatric competency levels and improving geriatric nursing practice. Thus the conference is consistent with the mission of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and it will address AHRQ priority populations of the elderly and women. Web-based dissemination and a special issue of a peer-reviewed journal of this conference's findings were not budgeted when this conference was planned. Due to the sharp increase in transportation and other costs and the need to have widespread dissemination of this information to those who live in rural and under-served areas, this application requests funds for web-based and print dissemination. Videotaping key aspects of the conference and posting them with associated contact hours on a University of North Carolina School of Nursing website will help assure that broad dissemination of the conference will occur. Invited papers will be published in a peer-reviewed special issue of the Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing that will reach 2600 journal subscribers. In addition these journal articles will be available to the public through PubMed.
Lay Abstract This project will enable nurses to update their geriatric skills via internet access to selected presentations from an international conference, Connecting the Dots: Geriatric Nursing, Education, and Clinical Simulation, to be held in Durham, NC in April 2009. This project will also support the development of a special issue of the Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing from invited papers presented at this conference to help a larger group of nurses improve the care they give to older adults.
