FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The keynote speaker at this year’s nursing research conference at the University of Arkansas will tell nursing students and practicing nurses how to keep “the passion in compassion.”

The 18^th annual Nursing Excellence in Leadership and Evidence-Based Practice conference will be Monday, April 6, at the Alltel Ballroom in the Arkansas Union. The conference is sponsored by the University of Arkansas Eleanor Mann School of Nursing, the Pi Theta chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Area Health Education Center-Northwest.

Carol Picard, a professor emeritus of nursing at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, opens the conference with her presentation “Keeping the Passion in Compassion.” Picard is the immediate past president of Sigma Theta Tau International and a past president of the International Association for Human Caring. In 2006, she was honored with the Clara Barton Humanitarian Award from Emmanuel College. In 2008, she was awarded the Living Legend Award from the Massachusetts Registered Nurses Association.

Picard is a clinical specialist in psychiatric nursing with 33 years of experience. She has a particular interest in chronic mental illness and quality of life, and she has presented papers and keynote addresses nationally and internationally on excellence in nursing as evidence-based, theory-guided reflective practice. Her research focuses on the experience of illness for patients and their families. As a poet and a dancer, she also works at bringing the arts to the arena of healing for patients and students.

Several practicing nurses will make presentations during breakout sessions, and University of Arkansas nursing students will present posters about research projects.

Katherine Delph, an honors student in nursing, received funding through the State Undergraduate Research Fellowship program last year to conduct research on the relationship between culture, beliefs and attitudes of Caucasian and African American college-aged women toward menstruation. She will present her findings in one of the afternoon break-out sessions.

A complete schedule, cost and registration information can be found at Nursing Excellence in Leadership and Evidence-Based Practice.