A NEW APPROACH TO HEALTH
Our Skills Labs, Standardized Patient Center and Clinical Simulation and Learning Center allow students to enhance their skill sets.
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he newly formed School of Health and Medical Sciences (SHMS) Clinical Simulation Department just celebrated its first anniversary as part of the opportunities available from moving to the Interprofessional Health Sciences (IHS) Campus in Nutley. This is an exciting time at the IHS Campus, where our programs are expanding their use of healthcare simulation activities to better prepare graduates to meet and exceed the needs of their patients. By using simulation, we are offering deeper experiential learning opportunities that are now available with access to the state-of-the-art building, learning spaces and technology. This access has vastly modified the way the SHMS programs are preparing their learners and evaluating competency milestones.
4   DIVERSITY & INCLUSION 2020
Healthcare simulation is a teaching, assessment and research modality that places learners in a real-to-life patient encounter that allows them to hone clinical care before actual live patient care. The beauty of healthcare simulation is that it offers a safe environment for learners to make clinical decisions without placing patients at risk. Simulated activities standardize learning because faculty have more control over the design of the patient case and important trends related to safer delivery of care. The third leading cause of death is healthcare error, with miscommunication attributing for 80 percent of the situations. The principle of practicing in a simulated patient care delivery environment is a paramount mechanism for addressing this disturbing statistic. Our simulated environments mimic the places our students will eventually care for patients. The spaces allow for ample exposure for acute care, outpatient and home care settings. They include
actual equipment and furniture for realism, allowing participants to complete assessments, make clinical decisions and complete clinical skills in real time. This real-time decision making allows the experience to include predictable patient outcomes. Our simulation program has an entire manikin family to depict patient life span beginning with a newborn to geriatric ages. Manikins have simulated pulses, lung sounds, heart sounds, bowel sounds, ultrasound capabilities, clinical procedure skill ability, and some neurologic functionality. For enhanced realism and deeper sharpening of effective patient communication skills, our program utilizes Standardized Patients (SPs). Standardized Patients are actors who have been educated on healthcare education objectives, feedback and debriefing techniques. After a faculty member designs a patient case, the SP learns the case information and presents it to the learners. This is paramount
