Mary Ekdahl Smart Center for Patient Simulation Training & Research

Center	Mary Ekdahl Smart Center for Patient Simulation Training & Research
Contact	Keith Samuels, Ph.D. , Title: Executive Director
Address	Pensacola Junior College 5555 W. Hwy. 98
City	Pensacola , FL 32508
Phone	850-484-2231
Website	http://www.pjc.edu/simcenter Email: ksamuels@pjc.edu

Mission

The mission of the Mary Ekdahl Smart Simulation Center is to contribute to improving the quality of patient care by using patient simulation to enhance mastery of clinical reasoning and patient-care skills.

Learner population – number and type of learners by discipline

The Center has focused its attention during the first three years of operation on integrating simulation into the Associate Degree Nursing curriculum. This college year (2008-2009) is piloting the same model with a group of sixteen Paramedic students.

During the 2007-2008 college year the Center taught almost 750 scenario sessions to nursing students. The typical session is scheduled for two hours, including the debriefing, and includes up to six students. There were approximately 3,200 student encounters.

Program goals

Use mid and high fidelity patient simulation as a teaching strategy with students in nursing and other health related programs.

Work with faculty and staff to integrate patient simulation into the curriculum.

Offer healthcare professionals opportunities to use patient simulation to refresh and develop patient-care skills.

Conduct and support research into the use of high fidelity patient simulation as a teaching strategy to promote student success and enhance clinical reasoning.

How do you use simulation to achieve your program goals?

We are able to broadcast simulations, live or archived, into classrooms to support/create a teachable moment. We also integrate scenarios into a lecture by scheduling several students in a section to participate in a case during a portion of the lecture while the class watches.

Simulation is used as an alternative clinical experience in nursing, constituting approximately ten percent of the clinical hours of each course. Each student schedules 22 to 24 different scenarios over the length of the curriculum.

Students are insured of experiencing a set of clinical situations that they may not be assigned as students, for example, OB/Peds and critical care.

Major accomplishments including publications

The college was awarded a U. S. Department of Labor grant of $1.3 million and raised an additional $1.2 million from other sources to create the Center as an independent organizational unit serving all curricula.

During the first year of operation, the Center hosted the Institute for Medical Simulation instructor training workshop Simulation as a Teaching Tool.

We established a collaboration with our Navy Hospital for their Advanced Trauma Life Support training.

The Center developed a nursing curriculum integration model that has each student schedule four to six scenarios as an alternative clinical experience in each clinical course in the curriculum.

The Center offered our first Patient Simulation Health Camp for high school students in June, 2008. Two week long camps are planned for next summer.

Areas of interest

Our primary interest is in determining the effectiveness of simulation in improving the clinical reasoning skills of students. We are strong advocates of the multiple scenario model that we have developed and interested in developing a research program around this model.

We are developing a workshop for clinical nursing faculty as a basis for using our simulation protocols to enhance clinical teaching and the post conference experience. We plan to develop activities related to interdisciplinary teams and disaster preparedness. We are planning a critical care curriculum for medical surgical nurses.