Nursing Alumni to Present at the Conference in Cape Town

Two Nursing Alumni will be presenting at the for Sigma Theta Tau International's 27th International Nursing Research Congress in Cape Town on July 21, 2016.

Both Tammy Nguyen and Maria Christina Fernandez submitted their abstracts and have been selected for poster presentation.

Tammy Nguyen graduated in fall 2015 from the GMSN program with a concentration in pediatrics. Tammy’s poster was her culminating experience that she completed for her graduation, “Implementation of Pediatric Resuscitation Training to Improve Team Performance and Patient Outcomes.” She explained, “In the pediatric population, cardiopulmonary arrests are pretty rare, but when they do occur, only about 30% of patients survive well enough to go home. Currently as health care professionals, we are required to have biannual training in Basic Life Support and Pediatrics Advanced Life Support but studies and the numbers have shown that those certifications are not enough. As part of my thesis, I researched into the current evidence based practice being utilized and created an intervention plan to train health care professionals on resuscitation. The goal is to have more training to build self-efficacy and team performance so patients’ survival rates would increase to 50%.” She thanks Dr. Therese Doan for motivating her to submit the proposal, “I wouldn’t have even heard of the International Nursing Research Congress if it wasn’t for her. She encouraged all of her students to submit and I’m glad I took the chance and did. It was her faith in her students that gave me this opportunity.” Tammy currently works at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit.

Maria Christina Fernandez graduated in spring 2016 from the RN-MSN/FNP program. Maria was born and raised in the Philippines. As a teen, she briefly thought about going to medical school. However, her desire to have a closer relationship with patients resulted in a change to nursing. She came to the US alone at the age of 19 to attend nursing school in the Midwest. In addition to receiving scholarship funding, she worked 2 jobs as CNA and Librarian to realize her dream of becoming a nurse. After graduation, she paid it forward by assisting her sister to attend college in the Philippines. She continues her sponsorship of students in the Philippines through a charity called "Pusong Pinoy" or "Heart of a Filipino". She also counsels International students on the brink of giving up and returning home. Maria’s heart exemplifies the heart of the charity. She came to SF State to attend graduate school and realize her dream of becoming a nurse practitioner. She learned about the Sigma Theta Tau International conference after she was inducted as a member on December 17th, 2015 and wrote a proposal for a poster presentation, "Efficacy of Low Microbial Diet in Immunocompromised Adult Bone Marrow Transplant Patients". “It is about utilizing evidence-based literatures on low microbial diet in order to decipher the effectiveness and importance of the said diet in immunocompromised adult bone marrow transplant patients. Because of this study, liberalization of the Low Microbial Diet has been instituted at Stanford Bone Marrow Transplant patients in early 2012. Food choice offerings not only became of greater variety but less labor intensive and also more acceptable. The STTI congress theme this year was about evidence-based research and so I thought that the project was a good fit for the criteria. What motivated me more to submit the abstract was the possibility of being able to share our positive result of the project to other nursing professionals coming from different parts of the world. Liberalization of "Low microbial diet" definitely uplifts cancer patients food choices. It is another way for cancer patients to gain that independence of deciding what they can eat after the constant battle of cancer diagnosis. This project was a proof that utilizing evidence-based literatures for nursing research can help improve a practice,” she said. Maria has been working as an oncology nurse for many years at Stanford Hospital caring for the sickest cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

Please join us in congratulating Tammy and Maria on their achievement!