Appropriations from a federal agency will give the Central Wyoming College nursing program and practicing health professionals in the community enhanced learning tools.
The college was recently notified of an appropriation from the Health Resources Services Administration which allows the college to complete a Virtual Medical Skills Lab and to purchase sophisticated mannequins which can replicate any type of illness or medical disorder that a student or practicing nurse in a rural setting may not normally encounter.
The college has received a $428,000 appropriation for the renovation of a space to house the facility and $190,000 to purchase additional simulated patients. The nursing program had previously received a federal grant for the “Sim/Man” mannequins but space for the virtual lab has been an issue. The college is now scrambling to find an appropriate space to locate the lab. The equipment is mobile and can be moved when the college is finally able to build its planned Allied Health and Sciences building.
While the virtual medical skills lab enhances a student’s clinical experience, it may also make it possible to expand the number of students CWC can admit into the program, Nursing Director Kathy Wells said.
The college is limited to the number of students it can accept into the nursing program because CWC is “maxed out” on its clinical hours at regional health care facilities. With the virtual lab, clinical time in the hospitals can be reduced. Last year alone, CWC had to turn away 100 qualified applicants to the nursing program.
Wells is most excited about giving students the flexibility of dealing with particular illnesses or traumas at the time they are being taught as the simulators will respond like a real patient and can be programmed to suffer any medical malady.
If a student reacts properly to the signals of the simulated patient, its vital signs improve. If the nursing student responds incorrectly, “it will go downhill,” Wells explained. The program’s graduates will be much more marketable to hospitals and other acute care facilities when employers know they have been trained to deal with trauma and illnesses not normally seen at rural clinic sites, she added.
“We can expose students to things that typically would only be seen in large urban hospitals,” said Vice President for Academic Services J.D. Rottweiler. “We can simulate things rural nurses may not see during their entire career.”
The “Sim/Man” mannequins provide a sampling of various medical emergencies in which our nurses need training. “The simulation lab will present these symptoms and train our nurses to immediately recognize and provide needed assistance; thus saving lives,” he said.
The Virtual Medical Skills Lab can also be used by practicing health care professionals for continuing education and refresher courses that are required by law. “Instead of sending doctors and nurses away for continuing medical education, the lab will allow them to get it locally,” Rottweiler added.
The simulated mannequins can be programmed to produce any medical condition. The nursing faculty will have the recipes for all bodily fluids so that students can learn to test, for example, urine with high and low Ph levels.
The new appropriation allows the college to purchase simulated mannequins for different stages in life, from infants to elderly. The dummies can even deliver babies in the breech position.
Two nursing faculty, as well as the nursing director, will attend training in Texas this summer to learn moderate and advanced operational applications of the equipment.