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.
We had mannequins, but no actual simulators when I was in school. I remember learning blood draws and IV starts on the fake arms. Does anyone actually find that beneficial? You could hit those hose veins with a tooth pick with your eyes closed, and they never move.
The size of the mannequin urethra is so huge, you can catheterize a mannequin with your eyes closed, using a garden hose.
Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
The size of the mannequin urethra is so huge, you can catheterize a mannequin with your eyes closed, using a garden hose.
Not to mention "normal" anatomy. I recently cathed a woman with two extra openings, all three far smaller than a normal urethra. I took a wild guess, used a pedi-sized cath and fortunately got urine return, but wonder if there may have been leakage from the extra openings. Very happy she was anesthetized as I had a coworker help me decide which one to go for.
Sims are a great tool to add to clinicals, not replace them.
Yes, there's a shortage of clinical placements. That should be fixed by limiting the number of nursing schools, not creating even less prepared nurses.
Although the two extra openings may have appeared to be openings they are not connected to the the urethra, if you would have attempted to insert the catheter into them, the catheter would not have gone in. Women with this anomoly do not experience urine leakage for them.
My university has advanced patient simulators that talk, urinate, defecate, you can assess all vital signs, breathe sounds. start IV's, give meds and a host of other stuff. We do not get our clinical hours cut; instead out SIM days are an additional day of Lab. I love the SIM days. In no way do I think that SIM days are real world nursing. They are very useful though. They are a definite reality check that there is so much more to learn. Also, when a patient is circling the drain, it is not nursing students that get to call the shots and run the code. The SIM reinforces how valuable the knowledge we are gaining is and that the need to continuously educate ourselves will not end.
Lol, totally off topic, but this reminds me of when I was a kid and used to put peanut butter in the diapers of my little sisters' dolls to make them think the dolls "pooped". Maybe that's what nursing instructors use for the mannequins...
Specializes in Orthopedic, LTC, STR, Med-Surg, Tele.
I think a big part of clinical is learning how to talk and relate to people - not just patients, but other nurses, aides, doctors, respiratory therapists, etc. I think that would be missing in a clinical that is replaced with sim lab.
I hated sim lab, personally. My school had a couple of sim men. They were the good kind, I guess. We could read their vitals, EKGs, start IVs/foleys/whatnot, listen to heart/lung sounds, etc... but I never got over the fact that my instructor's voice was coming out of a mannequin, and I never got over the fact that behind the patient was a one way glass instead of a wall. I am a pretty literal person and to really benefit from an experience I need to be emotionally involved, and it was very hard for me to become emotionally involved with a plastic man with my instructor's voice, no matter how detailed he was. I didn't think I benefited much from simulation at all.
I also HATE simulations. I don't care how "real" they are, they are NOT REAL. I really don't care if the sim dies. Don't care at all. In fact, I think they are hilarious when they seize or retract or the blue cyanosis light comes on in their mouth. It's just so ridiculously not real.
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dishes, BSN, RN
3,950 Posts
The size of the mannequin urethra is so huge, you can catheterize a mannequin with your eyes closed, using a garden hose.