Simulation Lab enhances education

SPOKANE– The Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing and College of Pharmacy will present a community forum to discuss the need for an Inland Northwest Regional Clinical Simulation Center in Spokane. The forum will meet from 2-4 p.m. Jan. 24 in the Academic Center, Room 147, on the Spokane Riverpoint Campus.

This initiative is a collaborative effort between regional universities including WSU, Eastern Washington University, Gonzaga and Whitworth, as well as regional health care providers including Inland Northwest Health Services, Empire Health Services and Providence Health Services.

The forum, complete with an actual simulated life-threatening health care scenario in which one of the simulation mannequins is the “patient,” will allow participants to explore the establishment of the regional facility, including costs, location and access.

The ability of health care professionals to respond appropriately to a rapidly deteriorating patient care situation takes time, opportunity and repetition—something frequently missing in traditional clinical experiences. However, human patient simulation (HPS) is rapidly becoming the gold standard for active learning and evaluation in medical and nursing education. HPS uses life-sized mannequins that actually breathe, have bowel sounds, lung sounds, pulses and a heart beat. All the HPS life signs and sounds, including patient speech, are controlled by a technician at a computer, simulating different disease processes, varying vital signs and deterioration or improvement in patient status.

College of Pharmacy Dean James P. Kehrer said, “This is a wonderful opportunity for promoting interprofessional education while also creating state-of-the-art training experiences for the students.”

Using human simulation in laboratory settings has been know to decrease clinical errors, lower health care costs, and increase the skill levels of doctors and nurses. In some areas, use of simulation laboratories has helped lower malpractice insurance costs.

“The human simulation center will be an important enhancement in the education of our Health Sciences students and in the core infrastructure we have for the health professions,” said Brian Pitcher, chancellor of WSU Spokane and vice provost for Health Sciences at WSU. “It will also strengthen the bond between the medical community and the university at a time when we are leveraging the strengths of our pharmacy, nursing, and health administration programs by seeking to add medical and dental education at Riverpoint.”

“The faculty and staff at the WSU Intercollegiate College of Nursing are committed to enhancing our current equipment and expertise in order to provide our students and the healthcare community with state of the art simulated learning opportunities,” said interim dean Anne Hirsch, WSU Intercollegiate College of Nursing. “Given the complexity of the healthcare environment, we are absolutely convinced that this is the future, and that simulation will play an even bigger role as a vital component of professional nursing education.”

Other benefits to be discussed in the forum:

– Simulation student training is cost effective – it costs $56 per minute
to train an anesthesiologist in the operating room, but it is only $70 per
hour in the simulator room. Further, the cost of human simulators has
progressively decreased from almost $250,000 to approximately $30,000 per unit.
– Simulation provides a risk-free learning environment.
– Simulation provides the ability to train using a multidisciplinary team
approach in an emergency situation.
– A simulation center will allow both healthcare providers and students to
meet requirements for competency evaluations.

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