In the world of research and academia, publication is not only evidence that a certain scholarly work is valid and legitimate to the scientific community but it also creates a sense of affirmation to the researcher and the research team that the sleepless nights of data collection, collation, writing, and data revising was all worth it. Publication is a humbling experience that one of our Global Pinoy Nurses has recently experienced.
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| Lee Labrague |
Mr. Labrague’s research focuses on the use of complementary therapy; health promotion approaches; use of social networking; maternal and child health; well-being of students; use of mobile application in health promotion activities; eLearning approaches, and genetic nursing.
He has been an author of over 20 journal articles related to nursing and health services research in Thompson Reuters, Scopus, and other indexed nursing journals. He also serves as a reviewer and editorial board advisor for clinical and nursing research journals. His contributions to the field of nursing have been recognized with an award from the International Association of Multidisciplinary Research (IAMURE) as one of the Outstanding Filipino Researcher in 2013. He is currently finishing his Doctorate in Management (Human Resource Management) at Samar State University, Philippines.
Describe your typical day at work as a nurse educator.
As a nurse educator, I can say there is no such thing as a “typical day” at work as every day I learn new things and I am still learning up to this day since I am new here in the Sultanate. Normally, I arrive at work at 7:00 AM every morning from Sunday to Thursday (by the way weekends here are Friday and Saturday). During Sundays and Tuesday, I go directly to the hospital for my clinicals, and the remaining days at school. During clinicals, I handle 5 – 8 students and I equally distribute them to 2 to 3 wards since I am teaching on nursing administration and they are assigned to be with the head nurses.
Throughout the day, students accomplish the objectives that are set and I frequently visit them at regular intervals to see how they are accomplishing their goals. At 3:00 PM, I conduct microteaching and do post conference to assess what they have learned for the day and to clarify their questions. During non-clinical days, I begin to spend most of my time reviewing their assignments. Normally, there are course and committee meetings scheduled and attendance is required. On Fridays, we participate in faculty development programs where speakers from other colleges and universities or from other countries are invited. During exam weeks, we do invigilation and the rest of the time is spent in doing research. I usually leave the college at 4:00 PM.
Your research project was recently published in the prestigious Journal of Nursing Scholarship. What does this mean to you?
Having a paper published in one of the top ranked journals in nursing after countless days of writing, re–writing, and revising is an achievement worth celebrating as an academician. Achievement in the sense that, after few months of waiting anxiously for the editors’ response, the glory of receiving an email saying “your paper has been accepted for publication” is all worth it. Just the thought of having my paper published in a prestigious journal like the Journal of Nursing Scholarship (JNS) is a dream come true for me. Although, I have been writing and publishing papers for a few years, doing this particular paper gave me that certain level of hype and exhilaration (not to mention that “caring” is my favorite research topic and multi – country research is my dream) and at the same time terrible stress (stress in revising and rewriting).
But of course, this achievement would not be possible without the commitment and handwork of my co – authors from other countries (Dr. Denise M. McEnroe - Petitte, Dr. Ioanna V. Papathanasiou, Dr.Olaide Edet, and Dr. Judie Alurappan). As a teacher, I firmly believe that we must continuously engage our self in scholarly work that will help improve our teaching and practice and contribute to our nursing knowledge, and that is through writing. This is especially true today when teachers are expected to remain effective amidst the ever growing competitive academic job market.