"Views and Experiences of Gender Diverse Older Adults on Aging and End of Life Care" Research Project

 

In order to better build upon the research skills I have already acquired, I realized that finding a research team to be a part of would be a great way for me to strengthen my research skills such as discovering credible sources, investigating an original problem, and displaying my work. In fall of 2021 I sent an email to the nursing professors that I was being taught by that semester, unsure as to if any of them would be interested in having me be a part of their research team, if they were even conducting research. To my surprise, a few professors emailed back excited that I wanted to be an active member of a research team. I am working with Dr. Tammy Neiman and Dr. Maya Bastian in a project on LGBTQ+ individuals and their views on aging. So far, the three of us have completed a literature review to determine our desired population, design method, recruitment, and sample. See the attached document for the evidence table used (Information Synthesis Levels 1 and 2). This information was gathered from nine credible, peer-reviewed journal articles in which we completed the evidence table to organize our ideas, while incorporating such information in to our knowledge base to guide our research when we reach that step (Information Literacy Levels 1-3). Our research question is "How do experiences of LGBTQIA+ older adults impact their view on aging?" (Original Research Level 1). Participants had the option of completing journal entries or being part of a recorded interview, providing answers to a set of questions and being given the opportunity to share their stories regarding their healthcare experiences (Original Research Level 2). Participants were recruited by creating a flyer that was then posted on LGBTQ+ organization websites as well as specified Facebook groups. In the end, we had 19 total participants, although I focused my poster presentation on the 9 gender diverse individuals. I was lucky to have the opportunity to be able to be a part of the data collection. I took the lead in two of the interviews asking the individuals questions (Original Research 3). In addition, I was able to take part in the data analysis portion of the research, discovering the common themes amongst the data.

 

After identifying the themes and understanding our results, my faculty mentors and I determined that the Midwest Nursing Research Society (MNRS) Conference in Des Moines, Iowa would be a great place to disseminate our findings (Dissemination of Results Level 1). The next step in the process for presenting the research was preparing an abstract for submission (Dissemination of Results Level 2). This had to be written, edited, and submitted to not only MNRS, but also to the Glen Taylor Nursing Institute as they helped to fund my conference registration and membership fee. After completing the abstract and submitting that, I started to create my poster which would be presented at the conference. I made sure to include some of our data from the interviews and journal entries that I believed best demonstrated the themes. In addition, I included some of the information discovered through our literature review within the background section and ended the poster with a conclusions section. In that section I focused on what we as nurses can do to best care for this community of individuals to increase their quality of life and positive experiences related to healthcare. At the end of March 2023 I had the opportunity to present my poster at a poster session within the conference (Dissemination of Results Level 3). This was an amazing experience, although I was shocked that I was the only poster that focused on care for the LGBTQ+ community. Therefore, the research revolving around this population needs to be increased dramatically. Presenting at the conference was very rewarding as a lot of individuals stated how much they appreciated the research we did, how they were going to use our recommendations in improving their own practices, and was able to answer questions. Although this was a bit outside of my comfort zone, I feel as though I grew greatly through this experience and hope to complete research again in the future.