BSN Summer Student Research Program

Research Description: The WHO estimates that one third of women globally have experienced sexual violence at least once during their lifetime. Sexual violence includes, but is not limited to: sexual assault, including rape; sexual harassment; and sexual exploitation. Sexual assault is a significant issue in BC and across Canada. This project focuses on a crucial health service offered to victim-survivors post-assault: the Forensic Medical Examination (FME). During an FME, not only is forensic evidence collected to support a criminal trial, but a health assessment is conducted, victim-survivors’ immediate healthcare needs are addressed, and emotional support for mental wellbeing is provided. The FME is a key entry point to the healthcare system as not only are immediate healthcare needs addressed, but ongoing needs are identified and referrals can be made.

The purpose of the project is to explore victim-survivors’ and forensic nurses’ views and experiences of FMEs in BC, to address knowledge gaps regarding how FMEs foster health and recovery from the patient perspective, while capturing the forensic nurse perspective to provide contextual information regarding FME provision. 
Research questions: 
• What is currently known about facilitators and barriers to positive, beneficial FME experiences for victim-survivors of sexual assault? (Phase I) 
• What factors act as facilitators and barriers to positive, beneficial FME experiences for victim-survivors of sexual assault in BC? (Phase II) 

Role of the Student: Mentored by Dr. Vicky Bungay and Dr. Lara Hudspith (postdoctoral fellow at Capacity), the student will support knowledge mobilization of Phase I results as well as the preparation for Phase II, including working with community partners, conducting relevant literature reviews, assisting with reports and supporting community engagement activities. This project will provide an opportunity for the student to learn more about community engaged and partnered research approaches and methodologies, to work with community partners and Nursing academics, and to gain experience with research knowledge mobilization. Located at the Capacity Research Centre, the student will work alongside research staff and graduate students.

Research Description: The drug toxicity crisis and mounting substance use-related mortality in Canada and globally have left many young people grieving the deaths of family members (biological and chosen) and peers. This project aims to characterize the issue of youth bereavement in the context of substance use-related death, with a view to inform bereavement supports and future community-based qualitative research with this population. We will build toward this work by conducting a scoping review of peer-reviewed, international literature on substance use-related bereavement among youth, published in English or French from 2000 to 2026. Search terms will follow the Population-Concept-Context framework to capture literature on youth, bereavement, and substance use-related death. Retrieved citations will be de-duplicated and screened by independent reviewers, and data will be charted using a qualitative extraction form. Findings will be summarized descriptively and through qualitative content analysis to identify key themes, knowledge gaps, and directions for future research. Knowledge mobilization for this project will involve a publication in a child and youth health or substance use journal as well as other community- and policy-tailored deliverables such as an infographic, policy brief, op-ed article, and focused presentation(s). 

Role of the Student: Student development and capacity building are project priorities and will be facilitated through close engagement with the project lead, Dr. Trevor Goodyear. The student will be involved in all stages of the scoping review. They will help develop the search strategy, screen titles/abstracts and full texts for inclusion, lead data extraction, and participate in data analysis and associated team meetings. The student will also assist with knowledge mobilization, including co-authoring the manuscript or other deliverables we prepare as a team. Through these activities, the student will receive mentorship and gain hands-on experience in scoping review methods and academic writing.

Research Description: This project is part of a mixed methods research program examining cancer care experiences in Canada, with a particular focus on older adults and their family caregivers. The study aims to better understand how health and social support systems influence cancer care access, coordination, and outcomes for aging populations. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, the research explores patient, caregiver, and provider perspectives to identify gaps in care, inequities, and opportunities for improvement across the cancer continuum. Findings from this work will inform evidence-based recommendations to strengthen nursing practice, health policy, and supportive care interventions for older adults living with cancer and those who care for them. 
The project is situated within the ACCESS Lab at the UBC School of Nursing and aligns with ongoing funded research led by Dr. Kristen Haase. Emphasis is placed on applied, community-engaged research and meaningful knowledge translation to academic, clinical, and public audiences.

Role of the Student: The BSN student will engage in hands-on research training, including qualitative data collection and analysis related to cancer care, aging, and family caregiving. Additional activities may include literature reviews, data management, contributing to mixed methods analysis, and supporting knowledge translation outputs such as infographics or web-based resources. The student will work closely with the supervisor and research team, participate in team meetings, and gain exposure to manuscript preparation and grant development processes, building foundational skills in applied nursing research. The student will be encouraged to present the research in community settings and interface with both older adults and healthcare providers.

Research Description: Virtual interventions can improve quality of life, reduce responsive behaviors, and enable safer, person-centred care for older adults with dementia in hospitals. The WhatMatters app project is a pilot implementation trial exploring the impact of a co-designed digital app to support person-centred care for hospitalized older adults with dementia. The WhatMatters app enables families to upload personalized content (e.g., music, photos, short videos) that helps staff understand and calm patients during distress. The student will support the app development, implementation, evaluation, and knowledge translation efforts of this technology and hospital-based research study. Using a collaborative, equity-informed approach, the WhatMatters team brings together people living with dementia, family members, hospital staff, decision-makers, and researchers to co-develop and refine interventions. The research integrates both qualitative and quantitative methods to assess feasibility, effectiveness, and implementation in a real-world acute care setting.

Role of the Student: In this role, the BSN student will support staff at hospital sites in using the What Matters app and tablet devices, coordinate participant tracking and data collection, contribute to the development of knowledge translation materials (such as guides, infographics, and short videos), participate in research team meetings and contribute to process evaluation and field notes, assist with ethics compliance, documentation, and secure data storage under the supervision of Dr. Lillian Hung's team, and perform other related duties as required.

Research Description: Globally, there is growing acknowledgement of the importance of engaging youth in policy processes to ensure their lived experiences and expertise are reflected at a policy level. The benefits of youth engagement in policy decision-making are wide ranging: empowerment, life skills, self-esteem, democratic and citizenship skills; resiliency; and the identification of issues, overlooked by others that increases decision-making and solution relevancy and uptake. Yet, there is a paucity of evidence on how to do this effectively. Responding to these gaps and opportunities, this multi-phase project, funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Mental Health Promotion – Innovation Fund, contributes to the science and practice of youth policy engagement – a key mental health promotion lever.
In the first project phase (2019-2021), a theory-informed intervention, Agenda Gap (led by Dr. Emily Jenkins), was designed and tested. Developed in partnership with young people from diverse contexts and backgrounds, the program centers youth expertise and equips youth to identify factors in their community that impact youth mental health, develop strategies to effect policy change, and engage in collaborative policymaking processes to promote well-being across socioecological levels. In this phase (2022-2026), the program is in its final year of being refined and tested in a variety of settings, in partnership with various community partners, using mixed methods evaluation. Our theory-driven approach supports insights into what works, for whom, and in what contexts. Project objectives are to: 1) adapt, implement and evaluate Agenda Gap to promote protective factors and address health equity and the underlying determinants of health across settings and populations in Canada; 2) strengthen and grow the project’s multi-level and multi-sectoral vested partnerships to continue to effect upstream systems change within priority determinants of mental health; and 3) scale the tested and refined version of Agenda Gap for greater impact and to foster sustainable policy and program development in the field of mental health promotion for diverse populations and communities. Research findings and partnership development will support the project’s third phase (2026-2029) of national program scale-up.

Role of the Student: The student will be integrated into the project team and trained in the qualitative data collection methods to measure/track inputs, implementation processes, and intervention outcomes. The student will be trained in 1:1 qualitative interviewing and thematic data analysis, including the use of NVivo 14, to conduct and analyze post-intervention semi-structured interviews with youth participants (aged 15-24), facilitators and select adult mentors to develop new understandings of underlying Agenda Gap mechanisms. The student will also receive training and participate in Ripple Effect Mapping activities, a qualitative evaluation technique that will engage youth and program allies in identifying multi-level program impacts and impact pathways over time. The products of this work will be generated during the formal summer student position, providing an opportunity to build their KT skills and research track record (e.g., report writing, presentations, peer-reviewed publication).

Research Description: Drug-related deaths are now a leading cause of mortality for children and youth aged 10-18 years across Canada. There is an urgent need for upstream prevention to build protective factors and minimize risks alongside current crisis-oriented responses. 
The pan-Canadian kindergarten to grade 12 (K-12) education systems, with ~6 million children and youth enrolled, hold profound, underutilized potential as a setting for upstream prevention.  However, there remain concerning gaps and system-wide inequities in school-based substance use education and intervention, leading to urgent calls from the education sector for support in designing and implementing a coordinated and evidence-aligned strategy. Responding to this urgent call, this multi-phase implementation science project moves beyond an effort to study or implement a standalone program and, instead, reflects a pan-Canadian systems transformation process that will build capacity among education professionals to effectively and equitably respond to student substance use in all aspects of their work. This includes in delivering substance use curricular and cross-curricular content, administration-driven interventions in response to student substance use at school, and whole-of-school approaches to promote wellbeing. In doing so, the goal of this project is to generate new knowledge that positions Canada as a leader in school-based solutions to prevent, reduce, and delay substance use harms.

Role of the Student: The student will be integrated into the project team and receive training in survey data collection and analysis to capture education practice through a second deployment of a national survey of school administrators on school-based substance use programming. The student will also be trained in scoping review methods and participate in a review of Tier 2 and 3 school-based substance use interventions. They may also receive training in 1:1 qualitative interviewing and thematic data analysis, including the use of NVivo 14, to conduct and analyze semi-structured interviews, if time permits. This will generate contextualized understandings of school administrator experiences and recommendations related to school-based initiatives to promote health and reduce substance use harms across a variety of education systems. Survey and scoping review outcomes will be generated during the formal summer student position providing opportunities to engage the student with the development of reports, publications, presentations and resources to build their KT skills and research track record.

Research Description: Pelvic examinations are an essential component of gynecologic healthcare, yet studies show gaps in pelvic examination knowledge and skills among physicians — exacerbating inequities in access to care and worsening patient experiences. Based on our team’s review and consultations with the UBC Faculty of Medicine Clinical Skills Advisory Council, the current UBC medical pelvic examination curriculum is outdated and incomplete. Additionally, it lacks attention to cultural safety, gender inclusivity, and trauma-informed approaches.

This project aims to develop a comprehensive and inclusive patient-oriented, culturally safe, and trauma-informed educational video to teach medical students how to perform pelvic examinations accurately and respectfully. The video will provide step-by-step demonstrations of examination components, highlight normal and abnormal findings, and include adaptations for various populations (e.g., adolescents, gender-diverse people). By integrating culturally safe and trauma-informed practices, this resource will strengthen both technical and interpersonal skills, helping future clinicians deliver inclusive and compassionate gynecologic healthcare for all. The video will also be freely accessible to other allied health students and the general public as an open educational resource.

Role of the Student: Mentored by Dr. Fuchsia Howard and Dr. Natasha Orr (postdoctoral fellow), student roles may include the following:
•    Working with animators to develop/revise videos
•    Reviewing and incorporating team feedback into video script and animation
•    Writing ethics amendments
•    Writing manuscripts – invited as co-author on manuscripts/projects they contribute to
•    Creating knowledge translation material (e.g., social media posts)
•    Participating in team meetings and taking minutes

Research Description: This project, which is part of a larger CIHR-funded pre-clinical (animal) study in the Ranger Lab (BCCHR), will help increase our understanding on how early-life exposure to pain and/or sucrose affects the developing brain by exploring the role of microglia, the resident neuroimmune cells. We recently found in specific brain regions (prefrontal, cerebellum) of neonatal mice that exposure to sucrose and/or pain could be a triggering factor for inflammation, inducing microglia reactivity. We found that microglia cells in the cerebellum of mice exposed to sucrose+pain had lower branch length and ramification index. The BSN student during their summer studentship will help support a project to evaluate if microglia are responding and branching in similar ways in the hippocampus, an important brain region for memory formation. Findings from this small project will add to our foundational work aiming to determine if inflammation and microgliosis are major contributors to brain injury and functional deficits in mouse pups repetitively exposed to pain, sucrose, or pain+sucrose. The clinical relevance of this work is that we need to better understand if receiving sucrose (standard care) to treat minor pain over many days in premature infants can cause inflammation and have negative impacts on brain development.

Role of the Student: During their summer studentship in Dr. Manon Ranger's Lab, the student will learn how to section and stain by immunofluorescence paraformaldehyde-fixed neonatal mouse brains to initially examine various cellular constituencies, such as microglia. They will also learn how to use confocal microscopic imaging techniques. They will help us identify possible deficits in particular cell populations in a specific brain region (hippocampus), as well as the effects of pain, sucrose, or pain+sucrose may have on cell proliferation or cell death. They will learn how to use an established method, 3DMorph - Automatic Analysis Software (MATLAB-based script), to quantify morphological characterization of microglial cell response.

Research Description: The supervisor, Dr. Ranger, is a Clinician Scientist working with the Acute Pain Service (APS) to advance quality improvement and research initiatives aligned with the PainCare 360 and Palliative Care program at BC Children’s Hospital (BCCH). Two projects are proposed for this studentship: 

• Project 1: In 2020, the APS implemented a novel protocol that allows selected patients to be discharged home on the same day after knee surgery with a continuous regional anesthetic delivered via an elastomeric pump. This model of post-operative home care is innovative in pediatrics and remains uncommon across Canada. The protocol has been highly successful; however, clinical data collected over the past 5 years remain in paper format. The project will involve compiling, organizing, and analyzing these data to describe patient outcomes and inform future practice.
• Project 2: In collaboration with the BCCH Emergency Department (ED), the APS plans a retrospective chart review of children presenting with extremity fractures with deformity. Current pain management for these patients is believed to be suboptimal. This review will characterize recent practices and outcomes as a baseline for developing an evidence-based pain management pathway in the ED.

Role of the Student:  During their summer studentship in the Ranger Lab in collaboration with the Acute Pain Service (APS) at BCCH, the student will review and organize clinical data related to pain management for: 

• Project 1: APS patients who have received a regional block for knee surgery and were sent home since 2020
• Project 2: Children who have visited the ED for extremity fracture with deformity (years 2024-2026) 

The student will create databases to compile all these data (review APS paper documents and electronic hospital charts). They will need to access hospital e-charts through Cerner. They will conduct preliminary descriptive and inferential statistics to prepare preliminary reports.