University of Pittsburgh
University of the Sciences in Philadelphia
Integration of simulation into the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy curriculum begins in the student pharmacist’s first year and is emphasized throughout their professional education. In the first year, the school displays a simulated case of a patient with metabolic acidosis and shows the pharmacist’s involvement in the therapy decisionmaking process at the bedside and the basic physiologic response to this imbalance.
As the role of today’s pharmacist grows and changes, Philadelphia College of Pharmacy (PCP) has made changes to prepare students for these and other real-life demands.
In the second professional year, Pitt’s use of simulation is used to expand communication skills, solidify basic science foundation of disease and therapy, and practice problem-solving/decisionmaking skills. During the third professional year, students can take the acute care pharmacotherapy simulation elective, in which all contact time for the course is in simulated patient care rounds. Dr. Susan M. Meyer, professor and associate dean for education, along with colleagues from the schools of medicine and nursing, are collaborating to address an important element of simulation training: colleague-with-colleague communication. In the standardized patient teaching model, an individual trained to act as a patient with specific symptoms, problems, emotions and other factors impacting care, portrays that role in a teaching situation with a health professions student to develop scenarios depicting interprofessional communication challenges using standardized colleagues. Supported by an Innovation in Education award from the Office of the Provost, the group has implemented five scenarios in the pharmacy and nursing curriculum in which the role of the physician is portrayed by a standardized colleague to represent authentic interprofessional interactions and communication.
The University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy collaborates with the Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation, Education, and Research (WISER) to utilize simulation across the pharmacy curriculum. The simulation software programmed by pharmacy faculty offers benefits for assessment of numerous curricular outcomes by allowing the facilitator opportunities to provide immediate feedback to students, documentation of decision-making processes, and the capability to vary each simulation based on individual student need without interfering with actual patient care.
42
academic Pharmacy now Apr/May/Jun 2010
PCP’s newly remodeled, state-of-the-art Center for Advanced Pharmacy Studies (CAPS) laboratory offers interactive simulated training of situations that pharmacists encounter, promotes more active learning, maximizes various learning styles and fosters faculty-student relationships. The CAPS lab was remodeled to allow for a more interactive and learner-centered environment as well as to upgrade the technology used for teaching. The CAPS Simulation Lab includes MegaCode Kelly, plus control unit, a hospital bed and 35 MicroSim licenses, just to name a few of its many elements. MegaCode Kelly advanced life-support manikin with VitalSimTM Vital Signs Simulator is a high-tech, life-size training manikin, located in PCP’s acute patient care laboratory. This interactive system provides real-life simulations of advanced emergency hospital/pre-hospital experiences. The laboratory is also equipped with the MicroSim In-hospital Self-directed Learning System. It provides students the ability to interact with a computer-simulated healthcare team to practice therapeutic decision-making for a variety of therapeutic areas including asthma, chronic obstructive lung disease, myocardial infarction, cardiac arrest and toxicology emergencies including aspirin and tricyclic overdose.