Over 5 years, the College of Rochester Faculty of Nursing transitioned from college students managing giant textbooks throughout a number of units, and schedules stuffed with lectures, right into a tablet-driven metaverse of studying the place educational designers work with college to supply real-world, hands-on expertise.
By mid-year 2023, this system reported a 50% rise in enrollment from its numbers in 2016. That enhance could seem stunning for a few causes.
Ninety % of nurses have been prepared to depart the occupation in 2022 as a result of administrative burnout and psychological pressure of working by the COVID-19 pandemic. The healthcare trade rapidly seemed to expertise to assist deal with speedy wants and ship care within the face of medical and nursing shortages.
Well being techniques leveraged synthetic intelligence to make the nursing workload extra equitable and informaticists to enhance or redesign digital well being file workflows to cut back documentation burden. Hospitals additionally applied digital nursing to ease clinician burnout, in addition to inpatient digital care to assist handle nursing shortages.
In the meantime, enrollments in greater schooling in healthcare and different industries dropped in the course of the pandemic. Nonetheless, youthful generations are nonetheless expressing curiosity in future careers in nursing, well being informatics, social work and different careers that intersect with well being fairness, in accordance with Felisha Norrington, director of educational help at Georgia State College’s School of Nursing and Well being Professions.
“The pandemic affected everyone and it was very, very troublesome when it got here to these working, however I am glad to see there are nonetheless college students who worth healthcare,” she stated of admissions starting to rebound.
Immersive schooling started with tablets
UR Nursing’s evolution to an interactive curriculum started in 2018 with the Redefining Our Classroom Initiative, which features a 16-month RN to BSN on-line diploma program, an accelerated program for non-nurses providing second bachelor’s levels in 12 or 24 months and grasp’s stage applications with 9 specialties.
Jassel Glanville, who’s now a med-surg medical nurse at Travis Air Drive Base in California in accordance with UR Nursing’s LinkedIn web page, stated on the college’s web site that her iROC studying expertise made her really feel “extra assured and outfitted to start.”
New college students are issued an iPad and instantly skilled on its use, defined Tara Serwetnyk, director of educational innovation, who led the iRoc initiative. Then, they enter low-stakes interactive actions to get comfy with the expertise earlier than being assigned high-stakes simulations and assessments.
Serwetnyk stated her driving imaginative and prescient has been “graduating practice-ready nurses” for the continuously evolving world of healthcare. It’s all in regards to the connection and setting expectations, she stated.
Along with the numerous customary functions wanted for educational work within the nursing applications, UR’s IT workforce hundreds a number of specialty apps that allow college students to take part in lots of interactive and collaborative studying actions, such on-line quizzes, be aware taking, studying video games, aspect deck creation, info sharing and extra.
Management assist is crucial when pivoting to an interactive academic supply mannequin, stated Serwetnyk, noting that UR nursing’s management has been supportive in reworking away from a lecture-driven curriculum.
Nora Williamson, director of strategic communications, stated the advantages of transformation to experiential studying are threefold and that graduating nursing college students have expressed that they’re assured getting into the workforce.
It is about resilience – “ensuring that the brand new nurses we’re placing into the workforce will keep, will assist construct these expertise and adapt to a lot of modifications,” she stated. “There’s a number of new expertise being adopted in healthcare, and nurses should be fixed learners on the job.”
School buy-in can be paramount to a profitable transition and devoted assist has helped them make it. As we speak, along with IT assist, UR Nursing has a workforce of educational designers working alongside educators, Serwetnyk stated.
For the reason that wants of your entire college have grown since iRoc started, there are devoted UR IT employees for iPads, simulators and extra, she stated. A centralized expertise providers workforce pushes updates out to all nursing program tablets and implements this system college’s expertise, ensuring every little thing within the atmosphere is operating easily and securely.
College students can use their UR Nursing tablets past commencement – they’ve entry to the books going ahead, stated Serwetnyk. They’ve stated, “I really like that it’s all on my iPad.”
New instruments add precision to the curriculum
The aim of shifting from a standard classroom right into a dynamic studying atmosphere is to hone crucial considering and medical judgment expertise in a posh and evolving healthcare atmosphere, in accordance with the UR Nursing workforce.
College students in this system are required to have the optimized tablets, which include all books and supplies required for the nursing applications and a software program package deal that the UR info expertise division manages. The associated fee is about $1400 per semester.
With it, they have interaction in a 20-bed expertise lab, 4 simulation labs with low- and high-fidelity, cloud-based manikins, two prolonged actuality rooms that includes alternate and digital actuality expertise, customizable experiential and medical studying rooms and extra.
This $15 million, 26,000-square-foot facility growth, with movable partitions to regulate the scale of its varied immersive schooling areas, accomplished in 2022. It has the appear and feel of major care workplaces and hospitals.
Educational designers assist strategize faculty-designed situations for giant and small-group studying. Nursing college students have interaction with college after which take part in energetic studying the place they work collectively.
The hands-on simulated affected person encounters are recorded whereas others watch from viewing areas and up shut with their tablets. with affected person actors. Not like in medical apply, college students can use the movies to evaluate situations and retain learnings.
Nursing college students may also get speedy suggestions with the recordings.
“Our college students can instantly go right into a debriefing room after a simulation happens with one in every of our educators,” stated Serwetnyk.
A scholar can then apply class learnings the following day with a manikin or one of many college’s affected person actors. Nevertheless it’s not simply medical expertise efficiency that UR Nursing’s immersive schooling program is instructing.
College students use cloud-based SimMan 3G and 4 SimMan Important grownup manikins together with child, juvenile and pregnant manikins that react and communicate, enabling nursing college students to develop and sharpen their affected person engagement expertise.
All of the video expertise within the expanded, state-of-the-art academic facility additionally signifies that nursing college students aren’t respiratory over one another’s shoulders.
As an alternative, varied cameras ship simulations on to their tablets and tv screens within the versatile rooms. Serwetnyk stated that every of the small school rooms has a big display screen monitor the place college and college students can venture from their iPads with the choice to venture into all the school rooms.
“After which we’ve got our experiential studying rooms, that are my favourite rooms,” she stated.
They’re a supply of creativity for the academic design workforce – “we’re nonetheless implementing actually various kinds of studying actions in there.”
The VR rooms are clean areas, added Kaitlyn Burke, a former UR Nursing scholar and now an educational designer and school for this system.
“As a result of the training area is so versatile, we’re in a position to make it what we would like it to be,” she stated.
Burke has labored with employees to facilitate “escape rooms” the place college students “have to resolve what is going on on with the affected person, and deal with that affected person with a view to escape,” she stated, noting that the experiential studying rooms might be arrange like a classroom, or arrange like a affected person room.
She stated the escape room simulations will final about half-hour. College students start with a pre-briefing earlier than getting into to evaluate the foundations and get instructions on working collectively to resolve the clues.
“After which we put a timer on the board, or on the TV, in order that they will see,” she stated.
Whoever will get out of the escape room first could get a bit of prize, “which makes it enjoyable, too,” Burke stated.
One other use is “Save the Millionaire” the place medical teams work to resolve issues collectively.
The VR rooms are additionally utilized by college to stroll college students by ideas, resembling particular sepsis situations, and college students can use them to prep for his or her exams. They’ll use one of many program’s eight VR headsets to entry high-fidelity simulations.
Proof of the rising efficacy of immersive schooling, New York not too long ago applied laws permitting simulation workouts to depend for 30% of medical coaching hours. [source]
VR boosts experiential studying
This system’s eight VR headsets supply 80 situations from Oxford Medical Simulation, which the nursing educators stated presents a secure area to expertise high-pressure medical situations.
Digital Actuality has proven its price throughout a number of medical specialties, resembling neurosurgery.
Hoag Hospital neurosurgeon Dr. Robert Louis has been working with expertise that was initially developed for F16 flight simulators. Having been pissed off with 3D mind anatomy fashions in surgical apply, he realized about and offered a VR system in 2015 that may take a affected person’s scans and construct a 3d mannequin that surgeons can then use to plan for and simulate operation.
“I can really apply it in VR, make errors when there is not any penalties, after which once I get there within the working room, there’s a greater chance that I’m going to do it proper,” he advised Healthcare IT Information in September.
Surgeons practising in VR forward of actual life within the OR just isn’t solely efficient for bettering affected person outcomes, it is confirmed persevering with schooling for clinicians in apply, in accordance with Louis.
College students report improved crucial considering
To measure the effectiveness of expertise integration UR Nursing makes use of the substitution, augmentation, modification and redefinition mannequin. SAMR relies on the methods expertise is used to revamp studying and join the classroom to the actual world.
Since implementing SAMR, in accordance with a case examine by Wolters Kluwer, one in every of UR Nursing’s expertise companions, the nursing program has made vital progress in digital transformation, modifying studying by 100%.
This system’s simulation labs with interactive manikins, tutorial digital well being data and hospital tools, VR headsets, state-of-the-art A/V and extra are serving to to higher put together new nurses sooner than conventional, auditorium-style lectures and restricted stay medical encounters, the software program and providers supplier stated.
To evaluate UR Nursing college students’ perceptions of medical judgment – measured over time from 2020 to 2022 – researchers requested college students about their use of the corporate’s Lippincott DocuCare, an educational digital well being data system. They reported invaluable hands-on expertise in charting.
Within the scholar survey, 93% of scholars stated their expertise charting within the tutorial EHR “improved their crucial considering.”
“They may undergo ideas in school, however recognizing that not everybody goes to see say a sepsis affected person in medical apply in preparation for an examination that is arising, we attempt to present them with medical sort experiences within the non-clinical setting as nicely,” Serwetnyk defined.
That is the place digital actuality performs a key function.
“Our college really discovered a rise within the examination scores,” she stated, which her workforce offered at a current American Affiliation of Schools of Nursing convention. ACN acknowledged UR Nursing with its 2023 Improvements in Skilled Nursing Training award for curriculum innovation and the development {of professional} nursing schooling.
Elevating college expertise is vital
UR Nursing has roughly 170 college. Their shift to experiential instructing started with the iRoc program. Then in 2021, UR Nursing grew to become an Apple Distinguished Faculty in 2021, which requires college to realize technological proficiency.
Program college use SimulationiQ software program to make real-time feedback on scholar progress throughout affected person simulations, which college students evaluate within the recorded movies within the debriefing rooms the place they assess their roles within the simulations and in a while their tablets.
“It’s actually highly effective for them to see it themselves. That’s the place the magic is for an educator,” stated Kimberly Buholtz, this system’s assistant director of simulation, in a Nursing Journal function republished on the college’s web site.
Based on 91% of these college students surveyed for the case examine, debriefing post-simulation enhanced their understanding of the ideas being taught.
Burke stated that this system continues to evolve as a result of the mindset for its supply is “fail ahead,” biting that they’re enhance scholar alternatives for extra teacher evaluations.
Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT Information.
E-mail: [email protected]
Healthcare IT Information is a HIMSS Media publication.