Keyser Campus nursing students skill up on research at PSC Library bootcamp
KEYSER, W.Va. — More than 20 sophomores in this year’s cohort of WVU School of Nursing students at WVU Potomac State College recently attended a half-day research skills bootcamp at the Mary F. Shipper Library.
Dr. April Shapiro, WVU School of Nursing Keyser Campus Chair and associate professor of nursing, expects students to be able to write in a professional style. Her high expectations have paid off, as one of her students, Katrina Roxas, was a lead author on a paper written with several other Potomac State College faculty and staff, including Dr. Shapiro, in the Journal of American College Health last year.
Students participated in three 50-minute sessions. One session taught by Potomac State College’s Dr. Caitlin Hudgins, assistant professor of English and director of the on-campus writing center, focused on guidelines for how to write research papers following American Psychological Association (APA) style, the preferred format for most nursing scholarly journals.
In another session led by PSC librarian Emily Zumbrun, students worked in teams to conduct a scavenger hunt of resources around the library facility, such as to find the location of study rooms and books and journals, as well as how to book appointments with librarians for research assistance. The scavenger hunt taught the students the importance of team management, including how to work cooperatively and also how to delegate tasks.
In the final session, two librarians from the Health Sciences Library on the Morgantown campus, Faythe Thurman and Jennifer Monnin, taught students how to access and utilize the scholarly nursing databases available to them. These databases are available to all WVU students, regardless of where they are enrolled. Additionally, Thurman and Monnin taught the students how to use Zotero, a free research management tool that helps students keep their sources and notes organized and helps with citations.
Library Director Nick Gardner shared that he and Zumbrun provide library instruction to the majority of Potomac State College students through classroom visitations and work closely with faculty on developing assignments that help students build research and information-seeking skills for the modern workforce. However, for the new nursing cohort, he felt it was important to bring librarians to the Keyser campus who have more specialized knowledge and work regularly with health professionals at WVU Medicine and the WVU Health Sciences Center in Morgantown to share their insights.
Gardner has noted that it is not uncommon to find even health professionals will fail to make use of all the resources available to them, such as their librarians, and it is reflected in the quality of their work.
“I’ve reviewed biomedical articles for peer-reviewed journals and I am always dismayed when I find researchers not checking in with their librarians to ensure they’re finding all the relevant information,” Gardner said. “I recently reviewed an article that reported on a supposedly rare condition which was actually quite widespread. If they had consulted with their librarians, they would have produced more thorough and accurate research.”
Stressing these skills early to nursing students will hopefully empower the next generation of researcher-practitioners to be more research and information savvy.
The small class sizes and ample student support at Potomac State College alongside its connections to the greater WVU system help differentiate its programs, including nursing, from other smaller rural schools in the region.
For more information on enrolling in classes at Potomac State College, please contact the Office of Enrollment Services by phone at 800-262-7332 or 304-788-6820, by email at go2psc@mail.wvu.edu, in-person at 75 Arnold Street in Keyser, or online at potomacstatecollege.edu. To learn more about nursing program options, visit nursing.wvu.edu.
-WVU-
nmg/08/16/2023