Teaching For Understanding - Celebrating the Contribution of Students in Intellectual Disability Nursing

The ‘Positive Choices’ conference is a unique International event which celebrates the achievements of student nurses studying to become Registered Intellectual Disability Nurses in Ireland and the UK. Participation and presentation at the conference provides students with the opportunity to publicly explore their practice, make it subject to critical review and evaluation and ensure it is accessible for exchange and use by other members of one’s community (Hutchings & Schulman, 1999). Real life clinical experiences are seen as an important starting point when developing and training student abilities for problem solving and critical analysis, thereby increasing and supporting the integration of theory and practice. The conference aims to provide students with an opportunity to showcase their work and to share something of the positive contribution student nurses can make to the ‘lived experience’ of people with Intellectual Disabilities and their families. This poster will present some details of how the conference acts as a vehicle to encourage and motivate ID/LD student nurses to develop their competence in identifying practice issues and implementing evidence based strategies to enhance service delivery