VIRTUAL SIMULATION
Brody’s Clinical Simulation Center goes virtual to support medical, nursing students
As East Carolina University’s Brody School of Medicine prepares future medical professionals, it relies on the Office of Clinical Simulation to provide lifelike patient scenarios for students.
However, with coronavirus guidelines in place, students have been unable to physically use the Clinical Simulation Center to learn and practice clinical skills required to treat patients.
Faculty from the Brody School of Medicine, the College of Nursing and Vidant Medical Center participated in the telesimulation sessions.
That is changing. The center has implemented telesimulation, a simulation-based experience at a distance using video conferencing platforms to provide education, training and performance assessment to learners at off-site locations. Simulation technology specialists David Schiller and Shod Kilpatrick from Brody and Jeremy Smith from ECU’s College of Nursing developed a platform in which students have access to important clinical training from their homes.
“Currently it is the only way to provide students with clinical exposure,” said Dr. Walter C. “Skip” Robey III, assistant dean for the office of clinical simulation and clinical associate professor of ECU emergency medicine. “We will continue to refine this and use it in conjunction with other educational modalities as they reemerge.”
Faculty from Brody, the College of Nursing and Vidant Medical Center are participating in interprofessional telesimulation sessions. Beyond Robey, faculty include Jacques Robidoux from Brody, Laura Gantt and Melinda Walker from the College of Nursing, and Stephen Smith from Vidant.
“We teletransmitted simulation scenarios from the Clinical Simulation Center to medical students in real time using Webex,” Robey said. “A group of interprofessional faculty were team members who worked through simulated clinical cases using lifelike, high-fidelity manikins in the center, as part of the medical pharmacology course. Students were able to observe in real time online, input into patient care, discuss therapy and participate in debriefing as a group to discuss management of the patient.”
The simulation center provides a safe, reality-based educational experience that increases competence in the management of patients, thus minimizing and preventing errors in the delivery of patient care. The simulated clinical setting allows practice, assessment and feedback while simultaneously promoting best practice standards and continuous innovation without risk to patients during the learning experience.
“The simulation lab team delivered multidimensional experiences to our learners,” Robidoux said. “Not only the pharmacological learning objectives of the course were met, the students participated in a high-fidelity interprofessional clinical experience.”
Medical student Perice Manns called the virtual sessions informative but also noted some areas that could be improved, such as reducing the number of students in a session to allow for more interaction and review of basic patient management skills.
Students were able to learn and practice clinical skills required to treat patients through the virtual presentations despite the pandemic.
“Witnessing the patient interaction of the ‘team of providers’ was beneficial,” Manns said. “I believe that we can learn a lot from just watching.”
She believes the simulation lab is crucial to her education.
“I think that we should try to get as much simulated clinical experience as we can because it is important to our medical education and it is something that I personally look forward to,” Manns said. “We spend so much time in the classroom and studying material, and it is easy to lose sight of why we’re doing it all.”
Student Ellen Williams said the virtual experience was worthwhile.
“I personally really enjoyed the simulation lab and thought that it was a very innovative way to get students engaged from a distance,” Williams said. “Brody has a beautiful sim lab that I always enjoy spending time in, so it was nice to have access to that resource, even if it was virtual.”
Williams said she appreciated the efforts of faculty and staff to make the simulation center virtual.
“I was really impressed by this experience overall,” she said. “I imagine that teaching medical students is probably a pretty difficult job to begin with, so I am sure that having to do so from a distance was even more challenging, just as it was more challenging to be an online student.”
She said students, faculty and staff at Brody have come together during the pandemic to continue the educational process.
“Everyone, both students and faculty of Brody, have been really supportive of each other throughout this whole process of online instruction, which has been nice to see and experience,” she said.