No abstract

Background: Accelerated growth in Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) programs has mandated the need for innovative strategies for doctoral students to defend their final scholarly work while protecting the integrity and rigor of the experience. Method: A poster defense strategy was implemented and evaluated via a faculty focus group and a Likert-scale survey. Sessions highlighting eight projects each were scheduled at 75-minute intervals allowing for both informal poster viewing and formal audience questioning facilitated by a moderator. Evaluation of the event trended positive, with focus group members celebrating the energy around each session, noting the significant increase in audience size compared to past podium defenses. Conclusion: Evaluators who attended previous DNP project defenses all indicated that the large venue poster session approach was just as or more effective than previous methods. [ J Nurs Educ . 2020;59(1):51–53.]