What is your opinion of the human patient simulator labs replacing some of the clinical time? My school is considering changing the model up to using the HPS labs more and more. Like instead of 16 weeks of clinical time, some of that clinical time would be spent in the HPS lab like 6 weeks of HPS time.
They are also considering allowing people to decide if they want to do both peds and OB clinicals and instead doing just one or the other. They would still cover the content.
It's about 5 years out. Our state board does allow HPS hours to count towards clinical hours.
I am mixed. Interacting with patients is good, but you also sometimes don't get that exciting clinicals. However it does show what nursing is and it's up to the instructor to make it better. Like 2nd semester we tried team nursing and it sucked. Then we tried not researching our patients and doing it like the nurses do where we get report for a day.
However, the HPS would allow for a controlled environment. We already do mock codes in there.
Part of it is we have a lot of nursing schools. We are competing against both RN and LPN programs for spots. We have at least 8 RN schools and at least a dozen LPN schools.
