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On Feb. 12, Graduate Nursing Students’ Association hosted the 11th annual Advanced Practice Nursing Conference. It was the first time the event was held online, and 73 people attended, including nursing faculty and students from UM and Brandon University.
With the theme “Preventative Health & Health Promotion,” the event featured four speakers from the advanced practice nursing field: Barbara Catt, an infection prevention and control manager at the Scarborough Health Network; John Jackson (pictured), a mental health clinician and community advocate and current PhD student at the College of Nursing; Lea Mutch, a clinical nurse specialist with the Population and Public Health Program of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority; and Rachel Wiebe Skouta, an instructor at the College of Nursing and clinical preceptor for nurse practitioner students from a variety of Canadian universities.
First-year MN student and APN committee chair Karamveer Kaur said the theme was chosen to discuss issues that are impacted by COVID-19 but also have longstanding significance to society, such as domestic violence and mental health. The topics discussed were Covid19 and other respiratory infections such as SARS, Indigenous preventative health, adolescent health that included mental health and STIs, and how to bring a health promotion changes in the community.
“COVID put more emphasis on the fact that we need health promotion policies and preventative policies,” she said. “But COVID is not a single event, it kind of leads into everything. Staying home is hard and it affects people psychologically.”
The event also raised $1,000 for Safe Housing and Directed Empowerment Incorporated (SHADE Inc.), an organization that provides housing and supports for immigrant and refugee women and their children who have been impacted by domestic abuse/family violence.