Thanks to our PhD student, Hagar Hallihan MSN.Ed, RN, for sharing her experience at the 44th Virtual Annual Conference from the Midwest Nursing Research Society. Additionally, we'd like to share her poster. Below is her report:
MNRS 44TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE VIRTUAL PRESENTATION REPORT 4-2020
This was a very interesting experience as the conference was held virtually due to global COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the beginning of the conference, presenters were asked to upload their e-Poster, which is an electronic version of the poster presenters will present during the virtual conference.
Day 1 of the conference was Wednesday, April 1st, 2020. I virtually attended new member orientation via zoom from 6:30 pm- 8 pm. The orientation provided me with an overview of the mission of MNRS, policies, how to get involved with other committees, and embed in the society. The orientation session also did provided expectations of upcoming conferences, for each presenter, possible awards on posters, etc. I found this very informative session because I had questions on the poster session, I was supposed to present the next day.
Day 2 of the conference was Thursday, April 2nd, 2020. My virtual poster presentation was scheduled from 3:15 pm-4:45 pm. Prior to the presentation session, each presenter was required to provide their personal zoom link or email address for attendees to reach out to them if they have any questions regarding their poster. I had provided my email address and added zoom information as well. Around 3:00pm, I logged in to the MNRS website then logged in to my personal zoom to share my poster to all participants. Initially, the system at the MNRS website was overloaded due to the large number of attendees participating in the event. Eventually, the system was back up running again. Because of this my poster session was extended to 5 pm. I did my presentation and had a number of attendees reached out to me via email and zoom. Although, they didn’t have specific questions regarding the poster, they all provided positive feedback on my poster, saying it was very impressive.
Day 3 of the conference was Friday April 3rd,2020. I joined the virtual poster session and browsed through other presenters e-poster gallery. I was able to join other presenters via zoom to ask a few questions regarding their posters.
Saturday was the 4th and final day of the conference. That day, I took the advantage of various programs that was running via zoom. I attended symposium science and health promoting behaviors across the lifespan. Overall, although this was a virtual conference, I did benefit from it in many ways by attending. Most importantly, this was very important for me as a minority PhD student as it helps boost my CV and hopefully helps advance my future research career.
