Innovation in Education at UMSN’s Clinical Learning Center (video and photos)
“Simulations not only teach--they change the behavior of students, and that carries over to real patients.”
“We pride ourselves on knowing the best way to deliver care and staying on top of the best 
evidence-based practice methods,” says Michelle Aebersold, Ph.D., RN, director of the University of Michigan School of Nursing (UMSN) Clinical Learning Center (CLC). “When our students come here, they will be part of simulations delivered by trained simulation experts who are also familiar with the current practice environment and the most up-to-date evidence base practices.”
UMSN’s CLC is a state-of-of-the art facility with skills labs, exam rooms, and high-fidelity mannequins, including the newly arrived SimMan® 3G. “Students were so excited to see the new SimMan and they were really impressed and pleased that the school would invest $75,000 dollars in one piece of equipment for their education,” says Dr. Aebersold.
“We always teach in the context of a real patient,” says Dr. Aebersold. “In a recent simulation, we had a patient with respiratory distress, and one of the roles in the simulation was the patient’s wife. The students got so involved in taking care of the patient that they completely ignored the wife. During the debriefing, when we were talking about what they would do differently, they realized their mistake. They realized they should have been informing her and maybe even used her help to calm the patient down.”
“I completely dreaded the Sim lab[s],” 2013 BSN graduate Laura Moll stated in a recent email to CLC instructor Betsy Cambridge. “I found them incredibly stressful, but little did I know how helpful it would be in my first shift off orientation.”
Moll, now a licensed pediatric nurse, told Cambridge that while doing her nightly rounds, she found a patient struggling to breath and his vital signs dropping. “I took a deep breath and suddenly my schooling came back to me. I remembered your instructions on reporting previous vital signs compared to what they were now to give a clear picture to the doctors on call. When they arrived, I had all the information they needed at my fingertips thanks to the many scenarios played out in Sim lab. I couldn’t believe how suddenly the situation came upon me in my nursing career, but thanks to simulations I was able to communicate what I needed and get my patient the help they needed.”
“The more we can bring our simulations to life, the more those behaviors become ingrained
into what the students do,” says Dr. Aebersold. “We use strategies similar to how police are trained to teach the students to fight tunnel vision and increase situational awareness. That’s why it’s important students have extensive amounts of time to practice.”
Dr. Aebersold, a nationally recognized expert in simulation research and teaching, has been a leader in the planning for the new CLC which will be housed in UMSN’s academic building, which is currently under construction. “When we started planning, we decided to make the spaces as much like a hospital room as possible to give students the most authentic experience,” she says. “Every hospital is different, but when students learn how to give an IV drug in simulation, it will be a nearly identical experience in the hospital.”
The new CLC will also include improved learning experiences for graduate students. “We’re building up our trainers so graduate students, like those in our nurse practitioner programs, can learn higher-level procedures,” says Dr. Aebersold. “We also know they have busy lives, so they’ll have key card access so they can practice those skills on their own schedules.”
Features of the new CLC, due to open for the Fall 2015 semester, include:
- 4-bed standard patient suite
- 12-bed skills lab that can also function as a nursing unit
- 6-bed simulation suite
- 16-bed assessment lab
- Task training room
- Anatomy lab
- Master control room and three classrooms
- Reception area
