Clinical Environment
Adult Medical Surgical
There are two rooms set up as Adult Medical Surgical simulation rooms. Each room has working hospital equipment such as hospital beds, monitors and headwalls with simulated oxygen and suction to create an environment of realism for the students to learn in. Each room is equipped with video cameras and microphones for viewing in the Conference/Debriefing room.
The patients in this area can be administered via a standardized patient or a high fidelity, Human Patient Simulator, (HPS), or a hybrid of the two that can simulate a human patient. The students have the ability to talk to the patient and have the patient respond. They can take vital signs and do head to toe assessments on the patients. The HPS patients can breathe, sweat and cry. The student can hear heart and lung sounds as well as provide intravenous therapy on these simulators.
Skills Lab
The Skills lab area is setup like a hospital ward with multiple beds and patients. The patients in this area are medium fidelity simulators. The student can listen to various heart, lung and bowel sounds to improve their recognition of different sounds they might hear on a real patient. These sounds can be programed for different conditions the patient might be experiencing.
The student can also take a blood pressure and palpate upper extremity pulses. While most procedures are done on static simulators, the student can begin to prepare for a procedure and actually take it to the “patient’s bedside”. This promotes patient safety initiatives that they will see in the practice arena.
Exam Room
The Exam room is replicated as an outpatient “office” exam room where the student can perfect skills such as a complete health assessment and various focused examinations.
Library
Within the Nursing Simulation Center, we have a student library set aside for our Nursing students. They have access to the internet through computers in the library as well as medical and nursing reference books for their use in research and study projects. This area is open to the nursing students and promotes group study activities and collaboration. This library is open for the students during the Simulation Center business hours.