Skills and simulation labs are where students practice the skills they’ll need in their careers in a safe environment. Using a medical manikin or trained instructor, students will work through a scenario or skill and receive criticism from their instructor at the end.
As the health care field has advanced to better care for patients, treatments, technologies, processes, and even record systems have become more complex.
To keep up with this growth, the methods used to educate our nurses have improved for the better. Today, nursing students graduate with more experience making care-related decisions and are better prepared to tackle high-pressure clinical situations. This improvement can be partially attributed to integrating simulated clinical learning experiences into nursing school curriculums.
At Pacific Lutheran University, our Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing (ABSN) combines online learning with in-person skills and nursing simulation labs and clinical rotations to prepare competent nurses with the skills needed to excel in their careers. The lab portion of our curriculum starts the first week of the semester. It is a critical step toward a more independent nursing practice, preparing students for other aspects of the curriculum, like clinical rotations.
What do these labs entail?
Nursing skills and simulation labs are only one portion of nursing education. Learn what to expect in clinical rotations.
What is a Nursing Skills Lab?
Skills labs are where students put their knowledge into practice and learn how to perform nursing skills. Students are taught safe, efficient processes for checking vitals, administering intramuscular injections, inserting catheters, providing wound care, and more. In the ABSN skills labs, students hone these capabilities with the support of faculty and perform skills on simulation manikins and perform skills on simulation manikins.
Students can make mistakes and learn in a supportive environment, free from the pressures of treating living patients and the complexities of real clinical settings.
Don’t start nursing school on the wrong foot. Uncover 10 tips on how to prepare for nursing school.
What is a Simulation Lab in Nursing?
While skills labs focus on nursing skills, nursing simulation labs prepare students to work through challenging health care scenarios and refine their clinical judgment. Sim labs prepare students for the situations they’ll encounter in clinical rotations and professional practice. Throughout your simulation labs, you’ll likely take part in various scenarios, such as:
- Childbirth
- Stroke
- Asthma attack
- Heart attack
- Allergic reaction
The nursing simulation lab creates a realistic stage for students to practice treatment and intervention using anatomically correct simulation manikins or a trained individual in a mock health care setting. These simulation manikins imitate the reactions and responses of actual patients as students assess and determine a course of action; they will cry, talk back, and ask questions, all reactions you will experience in your career.
Every simulated clinical learning experience allows students to practice applying their knowledge to their practice and integrating clinical judgment in real time.
How Simulation and Skills Labs Enhance Nursing Education
Every step of a nursing school’s curriculum plays a different role in preparing nursing students for their careers. Coursework builds a foundation of knowledge, and clinical rotations offer experience in the diverse application of that knowledge. Yet, competency requires assurance that can only come from practice and repetition.
Nursing simulation labs and skills labs do this in three ways.
Developing Clinical Skills
Nurses are expected to absorb much knowledge during nursing school, but clinical rotations cannot guarantee students an opportunity for every skill-related experience they’ll need post-graduation. Nursing skills labs offer consistency in the ABSN curriculum and expose students to diverse challenges.
Preparing for Clinical Situations
In a clinical situation, one person rarely makes all the care decisions; it is a health care team. Similarly, in nursing simulation labs, students often work with other students as they perform their assessments. This collaboration enables students to practice the communication skills needed to create the best possible patient outcome.
Students might act as the primary nurse while a peer takes on the secondary nurse role. As the primary nurse, it is up to them to devise a course of action, delegate tasks, and maintain communication throughout the simulation.
Hard nursing skills are only one part of nursing practice. Learn more about the role of communication in nursing.
Building Confidence in Your Skills
In a real-life patient-care scenario, there is little room for hesitation if something goes wrong. That is why it is crucial that nurses are not only well-educated but confident in their education.
Skills and simulation labs are students’ opportunities to build surety in their nursing care before treating patients in clinical rotations. A curriculum that includes skills labs, simulation labs, and clinical rotations offers students the maximum amount of practice so they can enter their careers with steady hands.
Simulations in Nursing: The Before, During, and After
There is more to simulations in nursing than the simulation itself. To ensure students get the most out of their labs, they should actively participate in every stage of the process.
Preparation: Students need to be adequately prepared before arriving at the simulation lab. They should review that week’s readings and coursework to anticipate potential complications and plan for nursing care.
Simulation: Despite the preparation, students will not know what will happen during a simulation, to ensure the scenario is realistic. Nurses never know in advance which patients they will care for during a shift, but they must be ready for anything. Since patients’ conditions can change quickly, health care professionals need to think critically and act swiftly to provide timely interventions.
At the start of the lab, students are assigned a “patient” displaying symptoms of one or several conditions discussed in the course material. The simulation could be performed solo or with another student.
Debrief: Potentially, the most critical step of the lab is the debrief after the simulation has ended. This is a prime learning opportunity where the participants receive feedback, reviewing what went right and wrong. It also allows participants or their peers to ask questions and clarify areas in which they are struggling. Overall, this makes them better prepared for clinical rotations and their careers beyond graduation.
Start Your Nursing Education at PLU
Choose PLU for a comprehensive nursing education that allows you to earn your BSN in as few as 16 months. Our ABSN program leverages students’ previous college education to allow them to graduate in a shorter time frame. At PLU, we embrace students as they are, just as our graduated nurses embrace their patients as they come to them.
Contact an admissions representative today to turn your nursing career from a dream to a reality.