From InfoServe 2.1 February 1995

Celebrating Nursing Scholarship

Dr. B.A. Anderson
Faculty of Nursing

The Celebrating Nursing Scholarship video project was completed in September 1994. I would like to thank the Radio and Television Committee at The University of Calgary for partially funding this worthwhile project. The video was initially shown at the 25th Anniversary of the Faculty of Nursing at a research conference on September 30, 1994. It was well received by the participants at the conference.

The video production took several months with the assistance of Communications Media (Mike Mattson), the Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Nursing (Dr. Lorraine Watson), the Director of the Multimedia Centre in the Faculty of Nursing (Bohdan Bilan), and myself. A special thanks to Mike Mattson and the production crew for their expertise and special attention to detail in the production phase. This project could not have been completed without their knowledge and unwavering support.

In April 1994, the majority of the nursing faculty gave consent for live interviews, or they submitted brief synopses of their scholarly pursuits. After the filming, a script was developed, and the project was edited.

The video portrays our vision of nursing scholarship; this encompasses theoretical, practical, and ethical aspects of nursing. The scholarly endeavours of faculty members are diverse and far reaching. Many of the illustrated research projects of the faculty demonstrate how nurses can make a difference in the lives of people, from birth to death, during periods of acute and chronic illness, and during times of health. For example, the phenomenon of human attachment, the emotional and physical healing of individuals and families, transcultural care of immigrant women, and health education for arthritic patients are the foci of some of the research projects. Other faculty members have focused on ethical decision making, allocation of scarce resources, program valuation, health education, and education of student nurses.

In essence, the video captures the intellectual life of the faculty and is an excellent way to disseminate our research activities to other universities, agencies, government bodies, and consumers. So far, the video has been used for masters students' orientation to the faculty of nursing, and there have been requests for this video from two international universities. Requests for purchase of the video have come from individual faculty members, the Dean of the Faculty of Nursing, the Associate Dean of the Masters program, and the Learning Resource Centre. The video is placed in our Learning Resources Centre and may be borrowed by health-care agencies within the city.

For more information, contact: Bohdan Bilan at 220-7768, e-mail: bilan@acs.ucalgary.ca