Why should you attend conference poster sessions?

Presenting posters at scientific conferences is often viewed as a valuable way for professionals, researchers, and students to cultivate presentation skills. Furthermore, the exchange of ideas between presenters and attendees frequently stimulates new perspectives. Coupled with in-person poster discussion, our recent poster presentation at the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) conference amassed 110 qualitative feedback comments from attendees who viewed it online. Given the substantial feedback received, our team decided to conduct a thematic analysis to evaluate the impact of the presentation and examine whether any helpful information was provided. As the data were not solicited by the authors, we did not anticipate that attendee feedback regarding our poster would lead to this spontaneous research inquiry. Thus, this commentary paper was developed without the context of a predisposing research question or hypothesis. From the submitted data, five dominant themes emerged that were agreed upon by all authors: Awareness, motivation, implementation, evaluation, and COVID-19 issues. Based on this experience, we affirm the value of conference poster presentations that invite presenter evaluation feedback, offer multiple options for viewing presentations (e.g. virtual viewing in addition to in-person presentations), and award attendees continuing education credit in exchange for viewing and providing constructive comments.