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Student Winners
of the 2005
APAP Student Writing/Nyquist Award Announced
By Eileen Evans
APAP is pleased to announce the winners of the 2005
APAP Student Writing/Nyquist Awards. They are
- Anita Makowski, from the University of Iowa PA Program. She was
awarded first place for her entry, “Pediatric Pain: Are We
Doing Enough?” As the first place winner, Makowski is also
designated the Nyquist Award winner.
- Kim M. Rutter, Pharm.D., R.Ph., M.P.A.S., PA-C, from the Marquette
University PA Program in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Rutter came in second
for her submission, “Measuring Functional Response to Opioid
Therapy in Chronic Nonmalignant Pain: A Literature Review and Recommendation”
- Kevin T. Wyne, from the University of Iowa PA Program, who placed
third for “Tremor Diagnosis and Treatment”
The Journal of the American Academy of Physician
Assistants (JAAPA) has generously sponsored the writing
awards for a fifth consecutive year. In addition to covering students’
travel, hotel accommodations, meals, and registration for the Orlando
meeting, JAAPA will award cash prizes to the students —
$500 to the first-place winner; $300 to the second; and $200 to the
third. The students will give brief presentations of their work to
peers, PA faculty, and family members at the APAP Awards Presentations,
scheduled for Saturday, May 28, from 5:15– 6:00 p.m., in the
Orange County Convention Center. APAP is very grateful for JAAPA’s
continuing support of this contest over the years.
The competition was a writing contest on topics of a
clinical nature, and any topic dealing with clinical medicine or issues
impacting the PA profession was accepted. First-place winner Makowski
recalled that during a pediatric lecture in her first year of the
PA program, the lecturer briefly mentioned that pediatric pain was
not well controlled. As Makowski tells it, “I was hooked from
the first paper citing an ER study in which school-aged children with
painful injuries had only a 52 percent chance of receiving analgesia!
I hope this topic will help alert PAs about this ongoing problem and
give them options to alleviate the situation.”
Rutter told APAP that she had always wanted to publish.
When she learned of the student writing contest early in her first
year, she held on to the information. “Writing a manuscript,”
she said, “involves a lot of work, but I can’t tell you
the satisfaction I felt upon submitting the final draft. That accomplishment
alone was enough for me. Winning second place makes it even sweeter.”
In the process of writing his paper, Wyne said that
he was surprised to learn how common tremors were and how much they
affected lives. He said, “Since it is still early in my clinical
career, I tried to develop a basic, straightforward approach to the
tremulous patient that focused on how practitioners could effectively
diagnose and treat common forms of tremor, as well as when referral
to a neurologic specialist was indicated. I hope my paper will be
a useful resource for practitioners dealing with this very common
condition.”
Keir Todd, PA-C, M.Ed., chair of the Student Research
Affairs Subcommittee of the APAP Research Institute, facilitated the
judging process for his fifth year. The submissions, which were considered
for the relevance of the topic to the PA profession, the quality of
the review, the thoroughness of the topic’s exploration, and
the paper’s overall literary quality, were blinded throughout
the review process. From 20 semifinalists, three winners were selected.
Todd was assisted by a number of reviewers who very enthusiastically
donated their time and expertise to reviewing the student entries.
APAP commends Todd and the reviewers for their contributions to this
process.
The APAP Student Writing Contest is under the auspices
of the APAP Research Institute. In a letter to runners-up, Institute
Chair Richard Dehn, M.P.A., PA-C, encouraged them to “continue
to hone your writing skills, as the recruitment and development of
our PA writers is an important part of our profession’s future.”
Dehn said he looked forward to any future scholarly work the students
might contribute to the PA profession, particularly in the form of
publications.
APAP invites all PAs and students to take advantage
of the opportunity to meet the students in person at the awards presentation
and hear them present their prize-winning work.
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