Movin' on up

Nurse practitioner graduate program changes locations

by Shawn Ryan

With undergraduate and graduate students both needing practice, things were getting tight in the Nurse Practitioner program’s simulation lab.

"I had a hard time scheduling in our simulation space just because there's always so much going on there," says Amber Roaché, who works with graduate students as Nurse Practitioner program coordinator for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

To lessen the squeeze, a plan was formulated to give graduate students their own simulation labs, Roaché says.

"We started looking at spaces on campus, off campus, that potentially our graduate program could use for the simulation space," she says.

The search eventually landed back on campus on the third floor of Davenport Hall, located catty-corner across Oak Street from the Metro Building, where the School of Nursing and current simulation labs are located.

The graduate program nurse practitioner students moved into Davenport Hall on Aug. 1, Roaché says. The space will be totally dedicated to the doctor of nursing practice program’s nurse practitioner program, which usually has between 35 to 40 students, she says.

A total of six simulation rooms are available in Davenport. Four will have UTC and Chattanooga actors portraying patients who are "experiencing" various maladies.

The other two contain equipment such as chest models for practicing chest-tube insertions, arms for the insertion of arterial lines and pelvises to teach how to perform pap smears or prostate exams.

All rooms have digital cameras to record students' work for review with them after the simulation exercises.

"They hate watching themselves, but it's really helpful because they can go, 'Oh yeah, I did that really well.' Or 'Oh, I see what you're saying,'" Roaché says.

While students are in the simulation rooms with the actors, faculty will be outside, watching through an observation window and grading the students, an added—but necessary—level of stress, Roaché admits.

After the simulations, faculty members will meet with the students to go over what was done right and what needed work.

"We debrief one-on-one with the student right after, and then we debrief as a group with the students and the actors," Roaché says.

For nurse practitioners, working in simulation labs "is phenomenal," Roaché says.

"Students have an increased sense of self-efficacy and their ability to go in, see a patient, look at that scenario that the patient presents and work through whatever problem it is, whether it's diabetes or high blood pressure or a cancer diagnosis that the student is having to give the patient and be able to do that in a safe environment."

Acute Care Nurse Practitioner student Oscar Guzman-Cruz

Family Nurse Practitioner student Mitchell Eton works in the new nurse practitioner simulation lab located in Davenport Hall