2022 NSNA/AAHN Essay Contest 

1st Place Winner Lisa Phan with Shantel Rodriguez and Sheri Tesseyman


2nd Place Winner Elizabeth Hemmes with Shantel Rodriguez and Sheri Tesseyman

The National Student Nurse Association and the American Association for the History of Nursing co-sponsored an essay contest in which entrants were asked to submit a 1,000-word essay on any aspect of nursing history. The essays were judged by AAHN members who evaluated each essay for accuracy, writing style, originality, grammar, and format. This is the third consecutive year NSNA and AAHN have co-sponsored the nursing history essay contest. Each year many students have submitted interesting, thoughtful essays making it difficult to choose the winners. Each judge uses a detailed rubric to assign scores for each criterion and adds them together for a final score. The final scores from each judge are added together to make combined final scores for each essay. The judges then meet to discuss the essays, so each judge has the benefit of the other judges’ perspectives, and the essays with the highest scores are the winners.

Prizes:

• First Place: $300, certificate, complimentary registration for the 2022 annual conference in Lexington, Kentucky, and a 1-year membership in AAHN

• Second Place: $200, certificate, and a 1-year membership in AAHN

Prizes were presented to the winners at the 2022 NSNA conference in Salt Lake City, Utah on April 9 by Shantel Rodriguez, representing NSNA, and Sheri Tesseyman, representing AAHN.

The first-place essay was “The History of Hospice Nursing” by Lisa Phan from San Diego State University. The second-place essay was “Mary Breckinridge: Pioneer of American Nurse-Midwifery” by Elizabeth Hemmes from Baker College in Michigan.

The two winning essays will be published in a future edition of Imprint, the journal of NSNA.

Thanks to all of the AAHN members who donated the funds for the prizes and to AAHN members, Shannon Perry, Jan Lee, Jenny Luke, and Sheri Tesseyman who served as this year’s judges. A special thank you to Sheri Tesseyman who attended the NSNA conference in person to give the awards.