Students working with a patient simulator
The technology of nursing requires constant attention. Just ask IU East students who learn from Nursing Kelly.
A hi-tech mannequin, Nursing Kelly is a patient simulator. Thanks to a gift from the Quigg Family Foundation of Richmond, Indiana, it has a new home—a lab where nursing students can use it and other technology upgrades to learn. These technologies allow aspiring nurses at the IU School of Nursing to experience the real world of life-and-death decision making without real patients.
Nursing students use patient simulators, some more advanced than Nursing Kelly, to experience real emergencies.
“We can make a simulator’s breathing more shallow or rapid,” notes Dean of Nursing Karen Clark. “It can even code, like when you hear nurses in hospitals yell ‘code blue.’”
All of this happens in a room with a two-way mirror for faculty to observe student interactions with the patient simulators. The room is part of the Reid Hospital and Healthcare Services Lab, which includes a working nurse’s station along with other technology in use in today’s healthcare industry.
“Our lab was created in 1991, and there’s been no update since that time,” says Clark. “Healthcare and the equipment you use change dramatically and quickly. Through this generous gift, we’ve been able to remodel extensively and get the technology we need.”
Mannequins like Nursing Kelly also allow students to make mistakes, necessary in learning, but a hazard in real patient care.
“I also think these experiences offer our students a level of confidence,” Clark adds. “We record student interactions with this equipment so they can go back and learn what they did and didn’t do right.”
That is an invaluable gift for these aspiring nurses and those they’ll care for. Therefore, it’s no surprise that this gift was part of IU East’s Campaign for Community, a successful partnership between the campus and its neighbors. After all, in any community, it’s the nurses who are on the frontlines of care.