Community, Partners Joined NAU College of Nursing at Yuma for Grand Opening Celebration of New Nursing Simulation Labs
Two children watched in awe as a robotic manikin called Lucina simulated childbirth at NAU-Yuma recently. Their mother is a nursing student, so they and their grandmother had joined her for the grand opening of two new simulation labs at the NAU College of Nursing at Yuma.
The event kicked off with welcome speeches by leaders from NAU-Yuma, the College of Nursing and College of Health and Human Services, followed by a ribbon cutting ceremony and catering by Julieanna’s Patio Café. Attendees then toured the simulation lab, a nursing skills lab, and classrooms where healthcare industry vendors demonstrated wearable patient-centered simulation devices and high-fidelity manikins.
“There are two different types of simulation,” said Jason Bradley, Campus Program Coordinator and Assistant Clinical Professor at the NAU College of Nursing at Yuma. “What we currently do (at NAU-Yuma) is called human patient simulation, and so we’re using robots, essentially, to facilitate human patients. They can be restarted, they can do any number of things, depending on the level of technology of the manikin.”
Bradley plans to bring patient-centered simulation devices to NAU-Yuma as well. “It’s wearable technology that a student can actually put on a device and be now in a patient’s position of having a urinary catheter placed, an IV placed in the arm, or a tracheostomy,” he said. It doesn’t elicit pain, but it does let them know when something is happening, like the tracheostomy, which sends a vibration to tell the students to cough.”
Attendees also got to experience some technologies. In the skills lab, where students were working with faculty and manikins, attendees used stethoscopes to listen to the manikins themselves, and to get some hands-on experience like the nursing students do.
At the new simulation labs, nursing faculty explained patient simulation to attendees, who then viewed simulations from various perspectives: the control room, the hospital room, and the observation area.
The diverse group of attendees included high school students and teachers as well as representatives from Yuma Regional Medical Center, Arizona Western College, and NAU’s regional partnerships.
The purpose of the event was for attendees to see how good the technology is so that partnerships could be formed to bring the products to NAU-Yuma and the community, Bradley said. “I think the products would be good for competency evaluations and increasing the patient centeredness of the perspective of our graduates because it allows them to be in the patients’ position.”
The grand opening celebration was sponsored by the vendors who demonstrated their technologies: Avkin, CAE Healthcare and Laerdal. Thanks to the vendors, NAU staff and students, AWC Facilities and Julieanna’s Patio Café, the event went off without a hitch, Bradley said.
NAU-Yuma still needs to raise funds for the new technology, and as a result of the event, discussions around potential partnerships and grant funding have been occurring, he said.
Anyone interested in contributing to the purchase of simulation technology for the NAU College of Nursing at Yuma may click on the following link to make a donation in any amount: https://crowdfund.nau.edu/YumaSIMLab
For more information, please contact Bradley at 928-523-6404, or Jason.Bradley@nau.edu.