Publications by authors named "Ismalia De Sousa"

Purpose: Stroke is often regarded as a disease of the elderly. However, 10-15% of strokes occur in people aged 18 to 50, and rates continue to rise. Young stroke survivors face unique challenges due to their occupational, family and personal commitments, which current stroke rehabilitation services may not fully address.

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Background: Pedagogical frameworks grounded in social justice, such as decolonizing and anti-racist educational practices, are essential in nursing programs. While scholars have begun to examine nurse educators' conceptualizations of social justice, there remains a lack of knowledge about student perspectives regarding nurse educators' approaches to incorporating social justice in education.

Objective: To understand nursing students' perceptions about educational strategies that develop critical awareness and engagement with social justice and positively influence professional practice.

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As a "foursome" of nursing history students and scholars, upcoming, junior, and seasoned, we presented a panel on new work and possibilities related to histories of Blackness and Black nurses in Canadian nursing history. Our presentation was the 2023 keynote Hannah Panel Presentation for the joint Canadian Society for the History of Medicine (CSHM-SCHM) and the Canadian Association for the History of Nursing (CAHN-ACHN) conference. Reflecting and expanding our perspectives, we share the relevance and significance of engaging with histories of Canadian Blackness and (in)visibility of Blackness in nursing history.

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Background: Significant advances in managing congenital heart disease (CHD) have occurred over the past few decades, resulting in a fast-growing adult patient population with distinct needs requiring urgent attention. Research has recently highlighted the prevalence of neurocognitive differences among adults living with CHD. Yet, there is a lack of knowledge about the perspectives of people living with CHD and family members/caregivers on brain health.

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Knowledge translation (KT) is the exchange between knowledge producers and users to understand, synthesize, share, and apply evidence to accelerate the benefits of research to improve health and health systems. Knowledge translation practice (activities/strategies to move evidence into practice) and KT science (study of the methodology and approaches to promote the uptake of research) benefit from the use of conceptual thinking, the meaningful inclusion of patients, and the application of intersectionality. In spite of multiple barriers, there are opportunities to develop strong partnerships and evidence to drive an impactful research agenda and increase the uptake of cardiovascular research.

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Drawing from a keynote panel held at the hybrid 25th International Philosophy of Nursing Conference, this discussion paper examines the question of epistemic silence in nursing from five different perspectives. Contributors include US-based scholar Claire Valderama-Wallace, who meditated on ecosystems of settler colonial logics of nursing; American scholar Lucinda Canty discussed the epistemic silencing of nurses of colour; Canadian scholar Amelie Perron interrogated the use of disobedience and parrhesia in and for nursing; Canada-based scholar Ismalia De Sousa considered what nursing protects in its silences; and Australian scholar Janice Gullick spoke to trans invisibility in nursing.

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Black nurses are at the margins of the annals of history and there is a dearth of historical accounts of their work. Drawing on our historical research about Black nurses in British Columbia (Canada) between 1845 and 1910, we point to the complexity of Black women's lives and argue that Black nurses disrupted the conceptualization of Blackness and Black womanhood of the time. We demonstrate the vital contributions of Black nurses to the health of communities and add to existing scholarship that redefines the nursing narrative: one in which white nurses are not the start and end point of history.

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Femininity and whiteness dominate Western nursing, silencing ontologies and epistemologies that do not align with these dominant norms while perpetuating systemic racism and discrimination in nursing practice, education, research, nursing activism, and sociopolitical structures. We propose Black feminist thought as a praxis to decenter, deconstruct, and unseat these ideologies and systems of power. Drawing from the work of past and present Black feminist scholars, we examine the ontological and epistemological perspectives of Black feminist thought.

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In Canada, the Eurocentric epistemological foundations of knowledge translation (KT) approaches and practices have been significantly influenced by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) KT definition. More recently, integrated knowledge translation (IKT) has emerged in part as epistemic resistance to Eurocentric discourse to critically analyse power relations between researcher and participants. Yet, despite the proliferation of IKT literature, issues of power in research relationships and strategies to equalize relationships remain largely unaddressed.

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Innovations in the treatment of valvular heart disease have transformed treatment options for people with valvular heart disease. In this rapidly evolving environment, the integration of patients' perspectives is essential to close the potential gap between what can be done and what patients want. Shared decision-making (SDM) and the measurement of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are two strategies that are in keeping with this aim and gaining significant momentum in clinical practice, research, and health policy.

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After 40 years, the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is the resource of choice for assessing the level of consciousness in patients with neurological conditions. Clinicians' ability to monitor patients' conditions, identify deterioration and make clinical decisions depends on their ability to carry out GCS assessments, so it is vital that they understand it. This article explores how best to use the GCS in clinical practice and examines some of the factors that can affect the accuracy of assessments.

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