Tag: Technology in Nursing Education

The Value of Simulation in Nursing Education

nursing_educationTechnology performs a significant part in every profession. It has surpassed all the dimensions of the healthcare field too. There is an obvious advancement in the technologies used in hospital configurations as well as education settings. Starting from the evaluation of sufferers, to the treatment methods, a variety of equipment has taken over the part of nurses. For example, EMR has replaced the manual documentation of patient care. The EMR was incorporated into the medical work-flow to maintain right documentation of patient details and care and to ensure safe, quality care to the patients. Just like the clinical setting, technologies are advancing in the area of nursing education as well. The introduction of simulators in nursing has bridged the gap between classroom education and medical practice.

What is simulator and what role does it play in the nursing education? It is the imitation or duplication of a scenario or an event that one would deal with in real life (Sasser, 2011). Simulation has been used in the health care field for quite some time now. It has undergone a lot of changes from the first life sized manikin popularly known as Mrs. Chase, to the high fidelity full body simulators. A nurse gains information through academic research, realistic sessions, case research, and conferences and so on Nurses learn theory in school and get their realistic exposure in the clinical settings. In many cases, learners are unable to think critically and are anxious while providing care to the sufferers. Moreover, their level of confidence is pretty low and that affects their overall performance. Simulation plays a central part in today’s nursing education.

Going back to early 20th century, nursing learners practiced their abilities on hypodermic injection pads, IM hypodermic injection on oranges and so on. After few decades, the life size manikin Mrs. Chase took over the nursing skill area and she became more popular nationwide, as well as globally. Over the decades, the simulators experienced significant changes and now, it plays an important part in improving the nurses’ actual skills. Standardized sufferers are well-trained individuals who mimic a part so that the nursing learners can practice their skills of evaluation and enhance their interaction abilities. High fidelity manikins are used in the educational set ups to enable learners to practice and enhance advanced medical skills. These are trainer driven and allow learners to practice their nursing, critical thinking, decision making and interaction abilities in a given patient scenario. Simulation is helpful in many ways. It enhances essential medical abilities like crucial considering, decision-making and evaluation and permits them to handle challenging situations in a secure and controlled environment. This in turn enhances the student’s confidence in dealing with an identical scenario in the near future. In addition, nursing learners are allowed to get some things wrong in a safe scenario.

Value of Technology in Nursing Education

Solutions for an improved nursing education include increased use of online learning, college tuition settlement, versatile scheduling and end of the week classes. For example, the MSN program at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, CA, provides college tuition reimbursement; onsite master’s and bachelor’s degree programs and a work-life balance office. Reconcile nursing education with compensation and marketing possibilities. Health professional incomes vary according to state, job title, work setting, and number of service beds, service type and level of unionization, according to the 2012 wage survey information from Advance for Nurses.

For example, in the South, nurses with a BSN make an average of $61,956 yearly, while those with an MSN make $77,370 yearly. Nursing staff are entitled to know the value to train and learn and extra technology training by hearing genuine reviews on career routes, marketing possibilities and wage development. Sell the C-suite and opinion management on the value of highly knowledgeable and technically smart nurses. CNOs in particular, can play an important part in positioning nurses as knowledgeable professionals who help enhance quality and safety, build a lifestyle of quality and responsibility, and offer low-cost, easy-access primary care through newly created models, according to the 2013 American Hospital Association Environmental Scan.

To accommodate the estimated nursing shortage, every school of nursing must make more students ready to take the NCLEX licensure exam. However, to ensure that nurses continue their education and learning after achieving initial licensure, requirements for further education and learning must be clear, simple to get around, rather than appearing a hurdle to the nurse’s future course work. For example, ADNN prepared nurses who join BSN programs often describe architectural limitations to further education and learning. The variety of requirements and general education and learning programs in both general and nursing education often require students to complete more programs than they expect. To deal with these issues, individual associate degree and baccalaureate nursing programs are integrating to standardize specifications through articulation agreements or dual enrollment programs. The new requirements must deal with the importance of training nurses in electronic medical records (EMRs) and information research using informatics that can be used to help enhance care synchronization.