New robotic patients give birth to educational opportunities
Nursing faculty gets new learning centre
Ashley Gaboury
Cameron Driedger and Stu Boyko, both third-year nursing students, test out their medical savvy on simulator
Near the end of February, the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Manitoba announced the official opening of its Simulated Clinical Learning Centre.
The facility, which includes simulated medical scenes like surgery and labour, will offer nursing students the opportunity to gain hands-on experience in a realistic and extremely detailed hospital atmosphere. Through interactions with high-tech robotic simulators acting as patients, students will be better equipped to enter an actual hospital setting.
“And when [students] come, they come in their nursing uniforms as they would be in a practice setting. So we pay attention to detail, that it’s as much as is close to being in the real practice environment,” said Sandy Kulka, co-ordinator of the fourth-year baccalaureate nursing program.
The idea for the new centre began four years ago, and this past summer, construction for the project began. The $120,000 facility was funded in a joint effort between the Faculty of Nursing and the university’s endowment fund, without any government funding.
The centre will allow students to engage in simulated conflict resolution scenarios, home visits to young families and seniors citizens as well as a staff lounge environment for negotiations, according to Kulka.
The delivery simulator allows students to experience different situations, which can occur during the birthing process. Students can familiarize themselves with specific equipment, the hospital bed, non-pharmaceutical pain relief, and assessment of a newborn as well as other key factors in a typical birthing environment,Kulka said.
Situations simulated are fairly simple at this time, typical of what would occur during a normal, healthy birth.
Plans to develop more complicated situations such as those involving a prolapsed cord, breech birth or the baby’s heart rate dropping will be in the works once students are used to the current simulations.
“At this point, it is undergraduate students that are working with the simulators. To have a scenario where you are running a code or where you have a major obstetrical complication would, I think, put [students] over the edge,” explained Tamara Burnham, an instructor at the Faculty of Nursing.
As advanced as the technology in the Clinical Learning Centre may be, it is in no way being used to replace the clinical portion of the program. Instead, it is used to support clinical and prepare students for much of what they will encounter during an actual hospital experience.
Cameron Driedger, a third-year nursing student, described the benefits to having such a facility available to students.
Driedger, who at the beginning of his second year, was put directly into maternity assisting in the delivery of a baby, said there are benefits to be able to gain experience with the birthing simulator first.
“My first three hours . . . trial by fire. I had no idea. Whereas, if I had done this first, I might have had a little bit of preparation. It’s a good idea.”
Driedger also appreciated the advanced technological aspect of the facility. The computerized simulators display symptoms, which the students are able to both hear and see and then must act on.
“Our teachers can better assess us than when we have a dummy that doesn’t react to any stimuli . . . where the instructors have to whisper, ‘OK, now pretend that they’re doing this or you hear this.’ So it’s a little more realistic. Although I will say, still not realistic at all because when you’re actually there it’s completely different because these guys don’t talk,” said Driedger.
Burnham added that one key advantage to the Clinical Learning Centre is the ability to stop a scenario and discuss any issues that may arise.
“One of the advantages here is that because the patients aren’t real, you can stop. If something happens that shouldn’t or a student has a question about something, the clinical facilitator can stop everything and you can discuss it, as opposed to at a patient’s bedside where you’re not going to discuss in front of the patient everything that happens.”
A combination of innovative technology and a realistic hospital environment, the Faculty of Nursing’s Simulated Clinical Learning Centre is at the forefront of centres of its kind across Canada.
