Sarah Guimaraes

Sarah Guimaraes, Ph.D.(c), R.N., CHSE, is the recipient of the Philip Raso Scholarship. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2005 from Tennessee Tech University's (TTU) Whitson-Hester School of Nursing (WHSON) in Cookeville, TN. She completed her Master of Science in Nursing Education through TTU in December 2016. She is currently enrolled in East Tennessee State University's (ETSU) Ph.D. in Nursing program and working on her doctoral dissertation.

Sarah's previous nursing experience includes Medical-Surgical Nursing, Long-Term Care, and High School Nursing in Washington, D.C., Manhattan, KS, Hanau, Germany, and Cookeville, TN. She is currently employed as a faculty member at Tennessee Tech University as a Lecturer and Undergraduate Programs Coordinator.

Since graduating with her BSN, Sarah always knew she wanted to be a Nurse Educator, either to educate patients or future nurses. In her faculty role as a Clinical Coordinator, she is honored to do both: still providing care at the bedside while role-modeling for and teaching her students. As a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator (CHSE) and previous Simulation Lab Coordinator, she has organized the WHSON's simulation program and incorporated INACSL's Standards of Best Practice in Simulation.

Above the expectations of her role as faculty, Sarah has co-authored several articles with her colleagues to disseminate innovative solutions for faculty and student development. Most recently, her team developed the CONQUER Method: Collaborating for NextGen Question Readiness, which provided a step-wise approach to developing NextGen Case Studies. In 2021, she paired with a tenured faculty to create the TERM Model, which incorporated mentorship as a test-item writing improvement strategy. Lastly, in 2018, she participated in a qualitative research project that examined teaching social justice in undergraduate nursing education through a poverty simulation.

Her current dissertation focuses on a quantitative research project examining moral disengagement and its connection to academic dishonesty in undergraduate nursing education. Academic dishonesty has been connected to unethical clinical practice repeatedly in the literature. As the most trusted profession for 20 years, nurse educators are responsible as the profession's gatekeepers to explore influencing factors on students' moral and ethical development while enrolled in a nursing program.

Sarah's goal is to use her dissertation as a launching pad to identify effective methods of identifying and addressing ethically-concerning thoughts and behaviors while students acclimate to the values of the nursing profession. Hopefully, this will reduce the frequency of unethical practices at the bedside and improve patient satisfaction and outcomes.

The Philip Raso Scholarship allows Sarah to complete her research project without concerns about additional expenses that are expected and necessary for completing a dissertation in addition to typical tuition and registration fees. It provides the gift of security and reassurance amidst a dissertation's newness and uncertainty.