Located on the second floor of the Health Education Campus (HEC), the Center for Nursing Education, Simulation & Innovation is composed of three areas that replicate clinical conditions for nurses in training. These learning spaces include a Physical Assessment Lab, a Clinical Teaching Bed Lab and a Medication Room. The labs are designed to reinforce and enhance the full spectrum clinical training. Descriptions for all of the facilities can be found in the drop down sections below.
This ten-bed center is for pre-licensure students (BSN and MN) and graduate nurse practitioner students (MSN) learning basic and advanced physical assessment skills. The room is fully equipped with ten physician-grade electronic exam tables that have inclining headrests, extending leg supports, storage drawers, and optional stirrups. To ensure privacy, the lab has custom ceiling-mounted privacy drapes at each bed station. The physical assessment lab has extensive locked storage for Welch Allyn and ADC Diagnostic kits, various-sized blood pressure cuffs, electronic blood pressure cuffs, and single- and double-headed stethoscopes for student use. Students also have access to human patient simulators, task trainers, breast and prostate models, a DVD library, and a large screen video display board to support our undergraduate and graduate lab sessions. Students also have access to the Lumis Insight Platform, an augmented virtual reality system that teaches anatomy and other skills.
This lab is comprised of 10 patient bed stations each with a static Laerdal Medical manikin. The lab simulates an in-patient medical-surgical or step-down unit and has a full-sized ADA hospital bathroom designed to provide students with the opportunity to learn how to transfer a patient in and out of the bathroom, to the shower, and to the commode. The center contains all of the common devices seen in the hospital setting including a Hoyer lift, Geri chair, wheel chairs, canes, crutches, linen carts, ventilators, ceiling-mounted privacy drapes, and head wall units at each patient bed to simulate oxygen delivery and wall suction. Our pre-licensure students use this lab to learn and practice every essential nursing skill from hand washing and bed making to wound irrigation and managing a ventilated patient. The center also has medication carts, smart IV pumps, and extensive locked storage for IV tubing, IV solutions, dressing supplies, catheters, chest tubes, foley catheters, sterile gloves, sterile gowns, bed pans, urinals, and tracheostomy supplies—to list a sample of the abundant equipment and supplies available for student learning. The lab also has a large screen video display board to support our undergraduate and graduate lab sessions.
The medication room is adjacent to the Clinical Teaching Bed Lab and is equipped with an academic version of the Pyxis Medication dispensing system, bar coding techniques, and synthetic medications. The medication room has extensive locked cabinetry, a sink, and counter space to provide a realistic setting for best practices of preparing patient medications.
Shared Lab Spaces
In the HEC, nursing students have access to the following shared lab spaces that foster interprofessional education:
These three labs are set up with portable head walls, one way glass, a large screen video display board, and video/audio capabilities for recording and debriefing and high-stakes testing. The labs can be set up for any high fidelity simulation with access to a family of Laerdal and Gaumard high fidelity human patient simulators: Apollo, Pediatric Hal, Birthing Victoria and Super Torie. All pre-licensure students and nurse practitioner students utilize these labs on a weekly basis throughout each semester for simulation training on human patient simulators; practicing various advanced nursing skills on task trainers; viewing skills and simulation videos; and conducting pediatric and obstetric lab and simulation sessions.
20 private exam rooms each equipped with a physician-grade exam table, side chair, exam stool, and built in otoscope and ophthalmoscope provide the opportunity for students to practice and review communication and assessment skills with faculty, peers, and standardized patients. Each room has one way glass, video and audio capability, and a small screen video display board allowing faculty to record exemplars and provide feedback on student practice, testing, and final examinations. Standardized patients (SPs) are hired for formative, summative, and high stakes testing situations and adjacent small and large debriefing rooms allow for private or class meetings prior to or following SP sessions.
This interprofessional lab contains a fully functioning Steris 3080 operating room table and fluid/blanket warmer, a full set of surgical instruments, back and gown tables, locked operating room cabinets, pulse oximeters, and an educational anestheasia machine, endoscopy, and Bovie machine. Students learn basic hand on skills, positioning, handling of surgical instruments, and safety related to perioperative nursing and nurse anesthesia. Audio and video capabilities allow for recording of formative and summative simulations and adjacent classrooms allow for pre-briefing and debriefing opportunities.
Acute Care Nurse Practitioner (ACNP) students, specializing in flight nursing at Case Western Reserve University train in the nation's first state-of-the-art simulator built in a full-scale Sikorsky S76 helicopter. The helicopter simulator allows faculty to input any two flight coordinates in the world, the time of day, weather pattern, and level of turbulence for students to experience the flight as though it was actually occurring. The helicopter features the most advanced medical equipment with authentic aerial views projected within the windows and the motion platform provides 11 degrees pitch and roll that mimics changing altitudes and weather conditions throughout the flight. The learning environment allows students to experience the physical confines of an actual helicopter while practicing the delivery of patient care to high fidelity human patient manikins to create the most realistic training of caring for critically injured patients from takeoff to landing. The center also has a static full scale ambulance for students to practice effective patient hand-offs from first-responders including fire, rescue, EMT, and Paramedics. The center is located on the ground floor of the HEC directly below the Steris Perioperative Lab allowing faculty to simulate taking the patient from the helicopter or ambulance up the elevators, directly to surgery. Both the helicopter and ambulance are equipped with video and audio capabilities to capture student interactions during formative and summative evaluations and provide the means for debriefing in the center or in any of the adjacent classrooms or debriefing rooms.