Elaine Marieb College of Nursing Clinical Faculty Team to Present Research at 2026 WPATH Conference

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From left to right: Lindsay DuBois, Celeste Surreira, and Chris Diaz.

Three Elaine Marieb College of Nursing clinical faculty members will be presenting their research at the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) conference later this fall in Mexico City. The team, who won a 2026 UMass Advance EPiC Award earlier this year, consists of: Lindsay DuBois, MSN, BSN, RN, CHSE; Celeste Surreira, DNP, FNP-BC, FNP-C, CNL, CEN; and Chris Diaz '23DNP, FNP-BC.

Their poster, "Supporting Best Practices in Clinical Simulation and Undergraduate Nursing Student Competency Through Community Collaboration" focuses on when the team collaborated with clinicians at Transhealth in 2022 to enhance a simulation with the overall goal to improve gender-diverse patient representation and nursing competency in clinical simulation. In 2022, two simulations were enhanced with community-based collaboration and insight. These included care for a non-binary patient suffering abdominal pain and care for a limited-English speaking patient with neurologic symptoms. These changes aimed to help students gain confidence in clinical nursing assessments, appropriate interviewing, and demonstrating trauma-informed care approaches to potentially vulnerable patients and their support systems. 

Student feedback since 2022 has been supportive of this simulation experience and the team received Institutional Review Board (IRB) exemption for their work in 2023. DuBois recently and successfully defended her doctoral thesis on this work as part of the Marieb College of Nursing's PhD in Nursing program. She says the team is honored to be selected for this opportunity.

WPATH is a "non-profit, interdisciplinary professional and educational organization devoted to transgender health" whose members "engage in academic research to develop evidence-based medicine and strive to promote a high quality of care for transsexual, transgender, and gender-nonconforming individuals internationally." The WPATH 29th Scientific Symposium takes place November 7—12, 2026.