Taking Ideas Abroad and Bringing Others Back Home

Theresa Kessler, Ph.D., RN, ACNS-BC, CNE, FAAN, Kreft Endowed Chair for the Advancement of Nursing Sciences, represented Valparaiso University abroad in July, 2023 at the Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Research Congress held in Abu Dhabi. While there, she gave a podium presentation on the importance of short-term study abroad and the benefits of exposure to different cultures and teaching strategies, and a poster presentation on work done in collaboration with Valpo undergraduate students on high blood pressure among college students.

The International Nursing Research Congress is an annual event that takes place in a new city each year. While the event had to be remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, in-person conferences have now resumed. The event includes presentations from international researchers as well as panels, career advising sessions, cultural experiences and workshops for enriching the professional development of nursing professionals and educators. Professor Kessler believes there is an enormous value in the international idea sharing environment the event fosters.

“I go to educational sessions, learn new pedagogy, new strategies for teaching and how different people are doing things,” Professor Kessler says. “That’s always a plus, because people are doing great things out there and you can bring those things back. I can also share things that we’re doing here at Valpo so people can see the great ideas that we have and share those with others.”

Abu Dhabi was an especially apt environment for international collaboration, as Professor Kessler found out while exploring the city and its neighboring regions.

“It surprised me how many international people live in those cities,” she says. “It was very rare that I actually ran into someone from the United Arab Emirates. They only make up about eight percent of the population. Everyone else moved there for work.”

Professor Kessler is by no means new to the event, having attended most iterations over the past 18 years. In some instances, such as this year’s congress, she has been able to bring undergraduate collaborations to an international crowd. The poster she presented based on a portion of undergraduate research into high blood pressure in college-aged students exposed some surprising results.

“You wouldn’t think that students would have elevated blood pressure at that age,” Professor Kessler says. “In our research, we found that over half the students had an elevated systolic blood pressure. In the diastolic, about a third of them were over. I expected to find that some of them were over, but not to that extent.”

An official diagnosis of hypertension would require serial readings, and could lead to the prescription of antihypertensive medication to people in their early twenties.

“We think of hypertension as something that middle-aged to older adults develop, but it’s really happening as young as in our twenties,” Professor Kessler says.

The biggest advantage of participating in an international event like the Congress is having the chance to make connections with other experts around the world, and the work done by Professor Kessler and her students generated enough interest from other nursing professionals to create opportunities for collaboration.

“I ran into someone from Taiwan that was really interested in my work on blood pressure, and would like to take a look at that with his own student population,” Professor Kessler says. “Someone from Finland gave a presentation similar to mine, so we’re talking about ways we could potentially collaborate in the future,” Professor Kessler says.

In addition to bringing ideas to share, Professor Kessler attended other presentations and panels, getting a feel for the international direction of nursing and the issues that are top-of-mind in the medical community.

“The ones that stood out to me were the ones that looked at where nursing needs to continue to look towards the future, what areas we need to continue to develop and expand upon, taking a look at how educational strategy is changing and how the climate is changing,” Professor Kessler says.

Professor Kessler took full advantage of her time globetrotting. In addition to attending the congress Abu Dhabi, she also took time to visit Dubai and Istanbul.

“It was a different part of the world, and a very different culture than what we have here,” she says. “It’s very westernized, but also it has its own unique elements.”

In addition to the International Nursing Research Congress, Sigma Theta Tau hosts a biennial national conference. Professor Kessler uses the resources provided as the Kreft Endowed Chair to send Valpo undergraduate and doctoral students to the event, giving the latter an opportunity to enrich their education with practical experience.

“One of their requirements is that they submit an abstract to a contact so they can disseminate their work,” Professor Kessler says. “We have at least three of them presenting at the biennial convention in November.”

Undergraduate students working with Professor Kessler to research blood pressure in college students will also present their work at the biennial conference in November. The 2024 iteration of the Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Research Congress is set to take place in Singapore. To learn more about Valpo’s involvement, and many of the other opportunities at the College of Nursing and Health Professions, click here.