Southern Nursing Research Society is Coming Back Stronger!

The Southern Nursing Research Society (SNRS) held its annual conference March 1-3 in Orlando, FL at the lovely Rosen Centre Hotel. The conference was sponsored at the Diamond level by Florida State University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of South Florida, and at the Gold level by Florida Atlantic University, Harris College of Nursing at Texas Christian University, Texas Woman’s University, and the University of Mississippi Medical Center School of Nursing. Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Kennesaw State University, University of South Carolina, University of California Betty Irene Moore Fellowship, and University of Maryland all contributed through providing our conference bags, badge holders, Whova app, and notebooks/notepads. These sponsorships were essential in keeping our conference from losing money and we greatly value their support. I am impressed with the level of support we received from the universities in Florida and on the east coast this year. Their combined sponsorship totaling nearly $90,000 allowed our conference to net about $20,000. Without this support, we would have lost money, which would seriously hurt our survival. Next year, let’s focus on increasing this level of sponsorship since it is crucial for the continuation of our Society!

           Our Society survives and grows through our membership numbers and our attendance at our conferences. In 2016, we had 1093 members and that has slowly declined to 503 this year, nearly a 50% decline. Of course, the pandemic was very difficult for all nursing organizations since nurses were stressed with increased workloads. This also applied not only to direct care nurses, but to faculty and students as well who were impacted with disruptions to their research, especially if they needed to collect community samples; to education with the switch to universal online classes; and the learning curve required to teach and attend classes online. In 2017, when we had 862 members, we had a conference attendance of 563 (65%); however, this year (2023) 86% (432) of our members attended the conference! The proportion of members attending the conference has increased! This means that our members are dedicated to attending our conference post-pandemic. Let’s keep up our membership growth and maintain our conference attendance to strengthen our society and allow for generous research grants to promising students and junior scholars!

           The Board of Directors were installed into their positions at the conference. The 2023-2024 Board consists of

• President: Elizabeth Reifsnider, PhD, RN, WHNP-BC, PHCNS-BC,FAANP, FAAN, Arizona State University
• President-Elect: Charleen McNeill, PhD, MSN, RN, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center
• Vice-President: Hyochol (Brian) Ahn, PhD, MSN, MS-ECE, MS-CTS, APRN, ANP-BC, FAAN, Florida State University College of Nursing 
• Secretary/Treasurer: Carolyn Reilly, PhD, RN, CHFN, FAHA, Berry College
• Director of Career Development/Awards: Kyungeh An, PhD, RN, FAHA, FAAN, University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio
• Director of Communications: Ashley Rivera, RN, PhD, Jonas Scholar, Florida Atlantic University
• Director of Development: JoAnn Long, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, Lubbock Christian University
• Director of Grants: Vicki Loerzel, PhD, RN, FAAN, University of Central Florida
• Director of Membership: Mercy Mumba, PhD, RN, CMSRN, Capstone College of Nursing, The University of Alabama
• Director of RIIGS: Miriam Ezenwa, PhD, RN, FAAN, College of Nursing, University of Florida

Visit the website here to find the Board members and their terms of service.

           Our Strategic Goals for 2023-2024 include assuring we have a robust and engaged network. Crucial to that effort is our Research Interest and Implementation Groups (RIIGS) where members concerned with the same health issues meet to plan for mutual assistance in research and scholarship. Some RIIGS are more active and have more members than others, and that has fluctuated over the years based on the membership composition. We have 10 RIIGS and they are in order of their membership: Minority Health, Research in Clinical Settings, Community/Public Health and Health Promotion, Aging/Gerontology, Education, Biobehavioral, Qualitative, Health Systems/Health Policy, Parent/Child, and Psych/Mental Health. I have always enjoyed participating in the RIIGS where I have collaborated on common research symposia and presentations. The RIIGs make connecting to like-minded researchers in other states, universities, and clinical settings much easier. If you are not already an active RIIG member, please reach out to Miriam Ezenwa and she can connect you to a RIIG that will meet your research interests. And if you’re in a RIIG, but not active, check our website for RIIG news! Several of the RIIGS post webinars where the RIIGS members present their research and discuss how to address health issues common to the Southern Region.

           An additional action to ensure a robust and engaged membership is to have a revitalized Student Network. All student members of SNRS are encouraged to participate in the Student Network, whether at the BSN, MSN, DNP, or PhD level. We have student members who are active in the Leadership Academy as well as the Network and all the benefits of the Society are available to students as well. Having been a SNRS member for 25 years, I can say with confidence that I was able to create a strong professional network that has benefitted me throughout my professional career as a researcher, faculty member, and nurse practitioner. I hope all nurses in the Southern Region who are curious about health problems and want to investigate solutions will consider SNRS as their home to address their desires to tackle health issues.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth Reifsnider, PhD, RN, WHNP-BC, PHCNS-BC, FAANP, FAAN

President, Southern Nursing Research Society

Save the Date!

SNRS Annual Conference

February 2024 | Charlotte, NC



Check the website for more information coming soon!

Interviews of Top Three Poster Award Winners

Kimberly Emery

First Place Poster Winner



Dr. Emery graduated with her PhD in December, 2022, and is now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Central Florida, College of Nursing.

Her poster compared oral microbiome of patients admitted to a progressive care unit from a nursing home versus those admitted directly from a home environment. The outcomes measured included bacterial taxonomy, alpha diversity (microbial diversity between samples), and beta diversity (compared microbial distance between patients and samples). A greater alpha diversity is a positive finding and associated with more positive clinical outcomes.

The scientific literature suggests there is a relationship between oral care and hospital acquired pneumonia, and that oral care may be a pneumonia preventative strategy. Oral care supplies vary greatly between hospitals and units. In addition, oral care practices may differ between populations, and is not the standard of care in non-ventilated patients.

In this study, nursing home patients demonstrated less alpha diversity, while home-admitted patients had a lower beta diversity. The significance of beta diversity is unclear and requires further research. It is recommended that all hospitalized patients should be engaged in routine oral care upon admission.

Dr. Emery’s future plans following her post-doc include securing a tenure-earning academic position to further her research.

Lauren Catlett

Second Place Poster Winner

Lauren is a PhD student from the University of Virginia. Her research interest is in end of life and palliative care. For her poster submission she examined the advanced care planning and healthcare power of attorney in Black versus rural lung cancer patients. She found that there was a decreased level of advanced care planning and lack of power of attorney in the Black population, irrespective of age or cancer stage.



Her findings support the need for future research to explain this disparity. Her future work includes examining hospice and palliative care in the transgender population. Her goal is to enter an academic position where she will focus on research, teaching and mentoring.

Angela Monk

Third Place Poster Winner

Angela is a third year PhD student at the University of Florida. Her poster focused on a feasibility study that explored the use of a hands-free breast pump for Black mothers in the NICU versus the use of a hospital-grade breast pump. Black women report early return to work, and a lack of privacy for breast milk pumping. This one piece device is quiet and is placed in the woman’s bra to express milk unknown to others. The ability to use breast milk in this population encourages breastfeeding and risk reduction for the mother for future chronic illnesses Black women are predisposed to.

Interim analysis (n=24) revealed a clinically significant result in volume of breast milk and duration of milk expression, although not stat significant at this time. Her dissertation work will focus on goal setting for provision of milk for mothers of babies in the NICU. She plans to graduate with her PhD in December, 2024.

Her future plans include engaging in translational research working between faculty and clinical position as a nurse scientist.

View all award recipients from the conference here. View photos from the conference here. View Photo Booth pictures here.

By Catherine Mbango, Ph.D, MBA, RN, NE-BC, OCN, Texas Woman’s University

The MH RIIG had a very active year in 2022 and we plan to continue moving our strategic plan agenda forward in 2023! Our mission is to promote the health of minority individuals, groups, and communities through research collaboration and dissemination, mentorship and peer support, networking and inspiring future generations of minority health researchers.

We held several webinars in 2022 where our membership was able to highlight and disseminate their scholarly research activities. We have maintained a strong presence at annual SNRS conferences through symposium presentations and this year five abstracts from the MH RIIG were presented at the SNRS conference on March 3, 2023. We are in the process of writing a white paper to address health disparities in maternal health among Black women in South Texas with the goal of a publication in the RINAH journal late this year. This effort has triggered student engagement and we will utilize this opportunity to mentor students and provide peer support. We would like to welcome new members to our RIIG to continue our community-based initiatives.

You are invited to participate in a research study consisting of a short, web-based online survey exploring barriers to scholarly collaboration among nurses and nursing students holding or seeking doctoral degrees. This anonymous survey study is being conducted by members of the Southern Nurses Research Society (SNRS). The purpose of this study is to collect information related to characteristics of nurse faculty, their history of, and current interest in, participating in SNRS, and their current experience with scholarly collaborations among and including both DNP and PhD degreed nurses. There will be no direct benefit to you from participating in this study. However, the information that you provide will help researchers and SNRS learn more about how best to promote scholarly collaboration among nurses and nursing students holding or seeking terminal degrees to better contribute to the quantity and quality of nursing science.

If you have any questions or concerns about your participation in this study, you may contact the Principal Investigator, Dr. Theresa J. Garcia, email: tgarcia@txstate.edu; phone: (512) 716-2856.

Don't forget as a SNRS member you have access to the Research in Nursing & Health (RINAH) journals. To assess the journals, take the following steps:

1. Log into SNRS.org with your username and password

2. Next look at the Member Resources tab at the top  

3. Click on RINAH

4. You will be taken to another page where you have to develop a password and username for RINAH.  

5. If you want to receive the journal monthly online, you must click the option at the top of the page once you are on the RINAH site.  

Applications for the STTI/SNRS Grant are Due April 1, 2023

The purpose of the Sigma Theta Tau International/Southern Nursing Research Society collaborative grant is to encourage qualified nurses to contribute to the advancement of nursing through research. Proposals for pilot and/or development research may be submitted for this grant.

The deadline to apply for this grant award of $5,000 is April 1, 2023. Funding date is August 1, 2023. Please check the website for the full announcement.

Applicants for the STTI/SNRS Grant must be a member in good standing of both STTI and SNRS. 

All applications must be submitted via the online submission system. 

Can't make this deadline? The SNRS Research Grant Award will be offered with a October 1, 2023 closing date.

SNRS wants to hear about your accomplishments, grants awarded, articles published, research projects, and more. If it's important to you, it's important to us! 

Here are a few recent highlights...

Ruth Kleinpell, PhD, RN, FAAN, FAANP, FNAP, MCCM

Vanderbilt University School of Nursing researchers have been approved for a $250,000 funding award through the Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Awards program, an initiative of the Patient- Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Independence Foundation Professor of Nursing Education Ruth Kleinpell, and Professor Marianna LaNoue, PhD, will use the funds to support identifying and disseminating strategies for overcoming barriers to patient- and family-centered comparative effectiveness research with patients who are critically ill and hospitalized in an intensive care unit setting.

Katherine Britt, PhD, MSN, RN

SNRS Member, Katherine Britt has lots of good news to share with the SNRS community. She has...

1. A new publication out from her dissertation work at The University of Texas at Austin, view here. 
2. Been invited to join the fourth cohort at the Michigan Integrative Well-Being & Inequality Training Program (MIWI) at the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, University of Michigan.
3. Been invited to participate in several Alzheimer's Disease research opportunities through Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Victoria Marshall, PhD, RN

For the last 10 years, Victoria Marshall has been working on improving symptoms in patients undergoing oral chemotherapy. Dr. Marshall, an associate professor at the University of South Florida College of Nursing, was recently awarded a two-year R03 grant from the National Cancer Institute (National Institutes of Health) to the tune of $149,000 to “Explore the Use of a Web-Based Program for Older Adults Receiving Oral Anticancer Agents to Improve Communication and Self-Management.” Currently, Dr. Marshall is seeking caregivers to share their insights with her through 30-45 minute telephone interviews. Participants will earn a $30 gift card for their time. For more information on this study and Marshall’s research visit bit.ly/VictoriaMarshall or email vmarshall@usf.edu. Read more.

Share your good news by completing this form so we can celebrate with you in a future newsletter, on our website, and via social media. #SNRSGoodNews

Check out the updated Membership page on the SNRS website that includes updated membership benefits and a video from the SNRS Director of Membership, Dr. Mercy Mumba. If you have any questions on SNRS membership benefits, please email info@snrs.org. 

Karen Alsbrook

So Hyeon Bang

Sarah Michelle Benavidez

Andrea Brooks

Amy Campbell

Genieveve Cline

Christa Cook

Tamara DePascale

Vanessa Duncan

Mary Friend

Trudy Gaillard

Carmen Giurgescu

Cynthia Greenwell

Hiboombe Haamankuli

Natalie Jo Hawes

Cristina Hendrix

Jessica Hernandez Chilatra

Denise Hopkins-Chadwick

Cassandre Horne

Dara James

Rozmin Jiwani

Caroline Kee

Yeonsu Kim

Katherine Kreis

John Leger

Zhaoli Liu

June Llerena

Janet Lopez

Andrea Madariaga

Stacey Marye

Preston Miller

Sara Moyer

J. Nelson

Kylie Newsom

Robert Parker

Jennifer Patterson

Abbey Poe

Marlene Porter

Alicia Ramirez

Ranjitha Rao

Kathleen Rhodes

Becky Rhodes

Jorge Rico

Sonia Riley

Denise Rios

Keesha Roach

Hudson Santos

Tasha Schoppee

Athena Sherman

Jennifer Simmons

Theresa Smith

Angela Starkweather

Asha Storm

Juliza Vidales

Jennifer Woo

Aislinn Woody

Reham Yasin

Looking for a Job? Looking for a great candidate to fill a vacancy? Visit the SNRS Career Center to access jobs and candidates within the highly skilled nursing research profession. 

Southern Nursing Research Society www.snrs.org