2022-23 AY Annual Report: Simulation Center (2024)

The Simulation Center​ 

Brief Description of this Unit

The SoN Simulation Center (SIM) provides a safe learning environment for nursing students in support of our core nursing degree programs, as well as community and outreach events. Through skill training and immersive simulation scenarios, learners are prepared for practice by honing their critical thinking and decision-making abilities with task trainers and high-fidelity manikins. Course planning, delivery, and support is a highly collaborative process between SoN Faculty, our simulation educators, and simulation technicians.

Key Overall Goals

• Provide a supportive environment for faculty, staff, and students to achieve excellence by integrating innovative, evidence-based, and active-learning strategies into simulation-based activities to support learning outcomes and to allow for clinical hour substitution.
• Assess and improve learner performance by testing the skills, knowledge, and performance of learners, and the effectiveness of simulation activities as part of an ongoing focus on continuous improvement and accreditation requirements.
• Promote, support, and conduct fundamental research and evaluation to enhance outcomes by utilizing simulation-based learning as a strategy and research tool.
• Improve the clinical skills, both technical and non-technical, of healthcare personnel and teams through immersive simulation-based learning experiences, preparing learners for practice and improving patient outcomes.

Services 

• Support skills-based, high-fidelity simulation, and Standardized Participant/Patient (SP) encounters across the curriculum for the DNP and A/BSN programs.  The Assistant Director and Simulation Educators work directly with faculty to design skills-based training and/or simulation scenarios to meet the needs of learners, curriculum, or content/clinical gaps identified by faculty.
• Simulation Educators meet with faculty and once the objectives have been identified, develop the pre-work preparation required by learners, design the simulation scenario or skills-based learning scenario and set up guide, facilitate or co-facilitate the session, and debrief learners.  Simulation Educators and Simulation Operations Technicians schedule and facilitate all high-fidelity simulation experiences that occur in the SIM center for A/BSN activities.  They co-facilitate and support all DNP-level high-fidelity simulation sessions that occur in the SIM center.
• For skills-based training, the SIM center is responsible for ensuring supplies are available to meet the objectives of the session, for set up and take down/reset of activities, and where needed, to co-facilitate the sessions role modeling and supporting faculty in the facilitation of the session as outlined by the best practices of Simulation.
• Support community outreach programs (i.e.: Dare to Dream) and internal programs such as Nurse Camp, SHPEP, and STEP programs supporting high school/college level students interested in health professions/nursing.

Support Provided during the 2022-23 Academic Year

• Total number of courses supported (DNP, A/BSN): 38
• Total number of students supported: 1030 (includes nurse camp, Premera, etc.)
• Total number of hours per academic year 2022-2023:
• BSN 67 hours/student
• ABSN 67 hours/student
• DNP 60-90 hours/student

2022-23 AY Key Accomplishments

• Developed a system to inventory and evaluate current simulation equipment to ensure that our current technology and equipment meet needs/objectives for training in the center.
• Collaborated with faculty to identify additional technology/equipment needs and developed a preliminary timeline for the acquisition of priority equipment/technology needed for the upcoming academic year.
• Adoption of the NLN Simulation Scenario template to guide the design, prebriefing, facilitation, and debriefing of all high-fidelity simulation experiences to ensure INACSL Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice are met, and we are following simulation education requirements associated with CCNE Standard III-G and WAC 246-840-534.
• Started the process to evaluate and transition all virtual simulation experiences used to support clinical hours to in-person simulation experiences (Summer 2023).
• All high-fidelity simulation clinical hours were prebriefed (to include prework development and evaluation), facilitated, and debriefed by SIM center simulation educators.

2023-24 AY Strategic Initiatives for SoN SIMULATION CENTER

• Transition and revise all skills-based training and simulation training from virtual simulation experiences to in-person training (A/BSN) facilitated in the SIM center.  We are updating skills-based training in the A/BSN programs to incorporate case-based learning to provide context and foster clinical judgment. High-fidelity simulation experiences are being developed across the curriculum to support clinical decision-making and prioritization using Tanner’s Clinical Judgment as a framework with A/BSN and BSN capstone simulation experiences.
• Complete the maintenance and inventory of all task trainers and manikins (low, mid, and high fidelity) to ensure that the equipment available can meet the needs and objectives of the training and simulation experiences requested.
• Collaborate with Student Academic Services (SAS) to develop a process for tracking simulation utilization across programs (simulation hours per learner, per course, per program).
• Support and assist with the coordination of both formative and summative assessments in the simulation space (skills “check offs” for A/BSN students and OSCEs for DNP students), including a peer evaluation component for A/BSN students to support the deliberate practice and refinement of clinical skills.
• Support DNP faculty in effective utilization of standardized patients through the HSA&F Standardized Patient Program to ensure effective coordination and training in addressing the needs of competency-based assessment, the AACN DNP essentials and SoN accreditation requirements.