NU Nursing students victorious
Nipissing’s Nursing students are the best. Now they’ve got a certificate to prove it, thanks to their recent victory at the Nursing Games, held at Laurentian University, March 19 and 20.
The Nursing Games feature eight teams of 30 nursing students from across the province who face off in skills testing and sports.
Nipissing’s team was the overall winners for sports, academics, lab skills and professionalism combined, winning the coveted Golden Stethoscope Award.
Student Maggie Schweitzer, president of the NU Nursing Society, provided the following play-by-play recount of the winning weekend:
The weekend began with a fundraiser dinner. Each school brought a silent auction item, all the proceeds went to best buddies Sudbury. During the dinner we participated in porketta bingo, a Sudbury tradition. Each winner was awarded a hot pork sandwich.
Saturday was the main event. The official start to Nursing Games 2016 began with opening ceremonies and a cheer off. Each school came up with unique cheers to introduce themselves. After opening ceremonies the academic event began. Ten students from each team were elected to go do the simulation and lab skills testing. During this time they did head to toe assessment. They determined different lung sounds and heart murmurs and ran IV solutions.
The other 20 students then rotated through different games to test their knowledge. The first event was a relay race. Each student went though an obstacle course and had to correctly answer an NCLEX based question before another person could go. McMaster took the early lead, but in the end, Nipissing won.
The second academic event was a breakout challenge. There were six stations that had to be completed within 30 minutes. Examples of stations include donning of PPE properly according to different scenarios, matching brand names of medicine to their generic name, reading a case study and coming up with proper nursing interventions, and knowing the meaning of medical abbreviations.
After the academic event the teams joined back together and ate lunch prior to dividing into teams for the sports events. Each school had teams of 30 that split into three teams of 10 for the sports. This year the sports were bubble soccer, inner tube water polo and Omnikin ball. In each sport the games were approximately 10 minutes long and everyone got to play at least three games. This allowed for each school to play against each other. Nipissing won all three games in bubble soccer, three out of four games in water polo and tied two of three games in Omnkin.
After the sports wrapped up all the teams went back to the hotel for a semi formal banquet dinner. During the dinner there were guest speakers and an address from the head coordinator. After dinner students had the opportunity to participate in a social event or take advantage of the many activities to do in Sudbury.
Sunday morning began with an excellent breakfast and career fair. Companies and healthcare facilities from Northern Ontario who are looking for new graduate nurses came to discuss opportunities and make connections. Schools who offer masters programs and nurse practitioner programs were also in attendance. Followed by the career fair was the closing ceremony. Nipissing tied with Laurentian for sports. Toronto took home the academics award and McMaster the spirit award. Nipissing took home the golden stethoscope award. This award is given for overall performance in academics, sports, sprit and professionalism.?