Springfield Regional Medical Center educates new nurses without a sim lab

 

Organization: Springfield Regional Medical Center
HESS Components Used: Care Monitor, Glucometer, Thermometer
Other Platforms Utilized: Low Fidelity Manikins

The Story:

 

The Springfield Regional Medical Center challenge involved how to conduct on-site nursing education to handle a rapid response situation for a group of new nurses - in an interactive and "active learning" fashion - when the facility did not have it's own simulation center, simulation equipment or simulation staff.

Clinical Educators Cathy Keifer and Danielle Weber used their regular education room to setup a couple of low fidelity manikins - and then used the HESS to bring the scenario to life with vitals that reacted to the learner's actions and progressively worsened until it was appropriate to call a "code blue".

Here is a video of the learning exercise:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JtKKH8oTPY

 

Neither Cathy nor Danielle are simulation experts - but the HESS is easy to use and so it let them easily create their own multi-stage scenario - and then run it themselves. And because the HESS is so affordable, they had multiple HESS sets available to handle separate exercises in the room simultaneously.

When the exercise was all done, the tables and chairs in the education room were put back in their normal places - and the HESS sets went back in their portable cases.