The Christine A. Tanner award is an annual award given to the best major article submitted to the Journal of Nursing Education. Nursing department Research, Scholarship and Quality Assurance Coordinator, Kim Mitchell was the 2019 winner of this award for her article “Constructing Writing Practices in Nursing” published in the July 2018 issue of the journal. Kim’s article explores writing practices in nursing from the undergraduate to the professional level, which are influenced by the academicization of nursing education that accompanied the movement of nursing education from the hospital to the university environment. She proposes that writing assignments can be a mechanism to close the gap between theoretical nursing knowledge and practical knowledge. The paper introduces a socially constructed model of writing that identifies the domains of writing to include identity development, creative and emotional knowing, relational aspects, and context.

Kim’s research work, including this paper, are part of her doctoral studies exploring writing self-efficacy in nursing education. The model described in the award-winning paper has been used to develop a measurement tool for assessing writing self-efficacy and is currently being tested with undergraduate nursing students at Red River College, the University of Manitoba, and Brandon University. The Journal of Nursing Education has made Kim’s article publically available on their website for one year.

The Journal of Nursing Education is one of the leading high impact nursing education journals. Further information about the Christine A. Tanner Award and a link to Kim’s award-winning publication can be found here.