When nurses and nursing students share their experiences with each other, their stories educate, provide lighthearted moments, inspire, build camaraderie, and help them cope with stress.
UNMC College of Nursing faculty members Mary Petersen and Mark Darby received a two-year UNMC Faculty Diversity Grant that will provide an outlet for nursing students to share their stories.
They created the UNMC College of Nursing Creative Writing Awards.
Nursing students currently enrolled in any of the college’s programs are invited to a submit story that illustrates a nursing experience. This year’s theme is Nurses Encounter Diversity.
Six $2,000 awards will be announced each year. Work may be either fiction or non-fiction, prose or poetry. The limit is two pages maximum, double-spaced.
Submissions are being accepted until Jan 8. Winners will be announced March 15.
“For five years, Mary and I have been conducting a workshop with students called ‘Finding Truth by Telling Lies.’ It was designed to help students integrate the difficult experiences of nursing using fiction techniques,” Darby said. “The stories were very engaging as well as a great teaching tool. We always said we should publish the stories.”
He said stories will be integrated into teaching to help students learn about nursing.
The top 20 entries will be judged internally by UNMC faculty and staff. The second round will be judged by community members including a nationally published poet from Kearney, several nurse authors and a local playwright.
Stories ultimately will be shared online and published in a booklet. Darby and Peterson hope to secure long-term funding once the grant funding ends.