JR
Jennifer Reid
  • Nursing
  • Class of 2014
  • Grove City, OH

Jennifer Reid Takes Top Honors at Statewide Student Nursing Competition

2013 Oct 23

Jennifer Reid helped Capital University nursing students bring home two trophies -- including the championship -- from the Brain Bowl, a competition among nursing students at Ohio colleges and universities.

Two teams of four nursing students represented Capital at the 2013 Brain Bowl, taking first and second place in the annual statewide competition, which was held September 27-28 during the Ohio Nursing Students Association Convention at the Kingsgate Marriott Hotel in Cincinnati. Thirteen schools were represented. Reid, a Nursing major from Grove City, OH 43123, competed on the Capital team that took second place.

"This is not only the first year that Capital University has won the trophy, it is the first year that any school outside of the Lake Erie area has won," said Wendy Blakely, Ph.D., associate professor of nursing and advisor to Capital University Student Nurses Association. "The students were very excited that they had this opportunity to shine for our school, and we are all appreciative of the support from Capital University's administration, faculty, staff and students."

Capital's nursing faculty selected team members based on academic and clinical performance, achievement on national standardized nursing specialty exams, and assessment of their leadership ability and ability to represent our school in a positive manner. Teams were composed equally of seniors from the traditional undergraduate program and Capital Nurse Accelerated Program (C-NAP).

The Brain Bowl consists to several rounds of questions, with 10 mostly multiple-choice questions per round, including a few non-multiple-choice medical calculation questions to test teams' calculations skills. Teams are given 30 seconds to discuss their answer choices before submitting one answer per team. Low-scoring teams are eliminated at the end of each round, and the questions become more difficult with each succeeding round.

The competition started in 2005, when the U.S. Army Nurse Corp donated the trophy and sponsored the event, which then was called the NCLEX Challenge, named after the Registered Nurse Licensure Exam. Before it became a statewide competition in Ohio, the Brain Bowl was a long-standing tradition among Ohio nursing schools in the Great Lakes region. As a result, Ohio's northern schools were considered powerhouses during the first eight years of the statewide Brain Bowl, winning the title year after year. Until now.

In addition to their impressive overall performance, Capital University's 2013 Brain Bowl teams distinguished themselves by:

  • taking first place in all five rounds -- Team 1 placed first three rounds; Team 2 placed first in two rounds;
  • acing the championship round, the most challenging of the -- Team 2 got every question right, and Team 1 missed only one; and
  • frequently being the only teams to correctly answer several questions in each round.

Along with the trophy, winning team members received nursing reference books from the F.A. Davis Company.