Department hosts research conference

related supply chain issues and needing to sort out some construction “kinks,” such as straightening the floor.

The Damianos nursing simulation lab was designed to imitate a real hospital, Simulation and Laboratory Coordinator Michaela Davison said. It has four rooms, each with a different type of patient: a laboring mother with a baby; two children, ages 1 and 5; a critical care patient and a “typical patient,” as Moussa said.

The patients are highfidelity manikins. The term “fidelity” refers to the manikins’ ability to mimic human bodies. They have pulses students can hear and feel, heartbeats and pupils that can constrict and dilate. They can also blink and follow nurses with their eyes.

“Pretty much, most of the functions of your human body they are capable of doing,” Davison said.

Before it was renovated, the lab was one big room with nothing to separate the patients from each other, except curtains in the laboring patient’s corner. Each room is equipped with basic caregiving and charting tools, including a headwall with a fake oxygen mask and working suction, as well as a laptop. The lab also has a storage room, which students can get supplies and medication from, like they would in a real hospital.

The difference, however, is that the high-fidelity simulation lab allows students to make “safe errors,” Davison said. She said nursing students without registered nurse licenses have restrictions as to what they may assist with, placed upon them by the state, university and medical facility they are working in.

“As much as we want to believe these are real people, they’re not,” Davison said. “So you are able to make mistakes and learn from them.”

Nursing students enter medical simulations after a briefing on basic information about the patient and their condition. Once they’re in the patient’s room, they are on their own — their instructor manages the simulation from a separate control room, observing the students live on a computer monitor. The instructor can control the patient’s vitals and can respond either with preprogrammed responses, such as ‘Ouch!’ or speak through a microphone on the patient’s behalf.