RCSI 36th Annual International Nursing & Midwifery Research and Education Conference 2017 Awards

RCSI 36th Annual International Nursing & Midwifery Research and Education Conference 2017 Awards for Mr. Mohamad Saab (PhD final year) and Dr. Joan McCarthy (Lecturer) 

Mohamad Saab, a final year PhD student at the School of Nursing and Midwifery presented his PhD work titled: “Developing an Interactive Intervention to Raise Men’s Awareness of Testicular Disorders and Symptoms: The E-MAT Study” at the 36th Annual International Nursing & Midwifery Research and Education Conference 2017 that took place on the 2^nd March in the RCSI in Dublin. Mohamad won the best poster award for his poster about the steps taken in order to develop and test the feasibility and usability of an interactive intervention aimed at enhancing young men’s awareness of testicular disorders using Virtual Reality. Mr Eoghan Cooke from the department of computer science in UCC, helped design the intervention, which is currently being pilot-tested. 

At the RCSI conference, Dr. Joan McCarthy, Lecturer in Healthcare Ethics at the School of Nursing and Midwifery also won best oral presentation award for her account of ‘Three Decades of Research on Moral Distress: so what?’. This was based on her ongoing research into the negative experiences of health professionals who are sometimes compelled to act in ways that are inconsistent with their personal and professional moral values. Given the increasing pressure on nurses and other health professionals worldwide to meet efficiency, financial and corporate targets and the implications of these for standards of patient care Dr. McCarthy argued, in her presentation, that moral distress is best understood as a conceptual tool that brings the emotional landscape of the moral realm to the fore and draws attention to the socio-political and contextual features of moral agency. 

From L-R: Dr. Joan McCarthy and Ms. Mary Jacob, current Dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at RCSI.