A few months ago, the Nursing Simulation Lab at Raritan Valley Community College was completely renovated thanks to a $125,000 donation from Sanofi.

The funding, said Director of Media Relations Donna Stolzer, has helped to enhance the educational environment that now includes the latest technological advancements, enabling nursing students to learn more efficiently and be more prepared to function in an increasingly complex patient-care environment.

The lab gives nursing students the opportunity to engage in collaborative learning and develop their skills through meaningful clinical experiences.

It also helps RVCC’s nursing faculty design teaching, learning and evaluation strategies that enhance students’ abilities to practice safely and effectively in a health care environment.

“The reason why simulation is so important is because students can be exposed to so many different conditions that they would not see in a hospital where they only have limited number of hours,” said Beryl Stetson, professor of nursing. “You cannot guarantee that they are going to see all these different conditions.”

Studies have shown that clinically accurate and risk-free simulation labs are effective in training nursing students to better understand communication processes, master skill-based techniques, establish priorities, make decisions and work effectively as team members — skills that enhance their value for hospitals.

“One of the problems with new grads is that they need to recognize very early subtle changes in the patient’s condition. The scenarios that the simulation lab provides enrich student’s readiness for practice and helps them to develop critical thinking and decision-making,” said Stetson.

Students have the opportunity, via the lab, to practice real nursing interventions and test their skills before they go into an actual hospital setting to perform them on live patients.

The lab includes two glassed-in simulation scenario rooms, high-fidelity mannequins, a control room and a 55-inch, wall-mounted television for the nursing computer room that allows students to view debriefing videos that are used as continuous teaching tools.

With a one-way mirror, Stetson said instructors can change vital signs in the patient/mannequin such as blood pressure and heart rate. They can create scenarios such as heart attacks or appendicitis. Vital information is fed to students just as if they were in a real world hospital environment and they take such actions as deciding which medications to give.

Feedback from students has been positive, Stetson said. Data from a recent survey reveals that the nursing students indicated that they want more simulation activities.  “Because they recognize the value of how it improves their preparation and readiness for practice,” said Stetson.

Stetson, who is chair of RVCC’s Health Science Education Department, points out for example, that when students are in a hospital maternity unit, there is no guarantee that they will see a birth on any given day. The lab has a simulator mannequin that gives birth and a scenario can be created whereby multiple complications can be introduced.

The simulation lab also allows students to practice nursing interventions on different age groups, body types and genders.

Sean Gibbons a first year nursing student at RVCC has been working in the simulation lab since last August. He said that it has been beneficial to work with models that simulate so many aspects of real life.

“The mannequins can cry and bleed there is a model that can give birth. The amount of things that they can simulate before you have to actually go in and do this on a real person is incredible,” said Gibbons.

“When you’re working with something for the first time and you’re walking into a room to deal with a patient, the last thing you want be thinking about is I’ve never seen anything remotely close to this before, I’m doing this for the first time on somebody. What happens if something goes wrong you really want to be sure that at least I have seen some semblance of what this is going to look like and how it is going to feel.”

Gibbons said that the simulation lab experience prepares students to approach real-life situations calmly and with the confidence that they know what they are doing.