(Music) Hi everyone, I'm Emily Behrmann and welcome
to JCCC Voices. Today we are in the Healthcare Simulation Center with Kathy Carver.
In 2008 Johnson County Community College opened a new Health Care Simulation Center, a two-thousand
square foot space with the look, feel and equipment of four general medical surgery
rooms and a large suite that can function as an operating room, labor delivery room,
emergency room and multi-bed recovery room. Each year more than sixty students prepare
for nursing careers in the healthcare simulation center under the guidance of the college's
nursing faculty. One of the faculty members who played an instrumental part in the creation
of the center is Kathy Carver. The holder of the college's first endowed professorship,
Kathy is the Zamierowski family Endowed Professor of Nursing and medical simulation at JCCC.
Welcome Kathy. Thank-you very much.
So tell me a little bit about how this facility, which is pretty amazing, got started here
at JCCC. Well I have to just say that it was many people
that have come together to really create this space. This is sort of learning at its best.
We created this space just for that reason. And even though it looks like a hospital it
feels like a hospital to the students. We created different pieces that really make
this a good environment to learn for both the students but also for faculty to teach
in and to be able to create the moment for that student. So that has been exciting. We
started in 2006 with several funds from the state of Kansas. They were looking at the
nursing shortage and simulation was thought to be a way to be able to create more learning
opportunities for students so that they could be better prepared for the future of healthcare.
With that funding from the state but also our community we had multiple donors and people
that were enthusiastic with this approach. They've all come together to create this
space. So when we say simulation tell me exactly
what that means in the health care environment. Well thank you for asking and I do think people
look at simulation as maybe an unknown but I will tell you that everybody uses simulation
every day. When we are playing our Xbox games or our video games, or something we are engaging
in a very active way in an environment that maybe we would like to be in. So, simulation
here is something very similar but instead of just using a computer as your entry into
that world you are actually able to walk in, have the physical space and to create that
learning moment for the students. So, they take care of patients, our patients verbalize
their needs. If they are in pain or if they are having difficulty breathing and the students
respond. So really, we're kind of dealing with big
robots in a way. We are dealing with very sophisticated simulators
in the sense that they breathe, they will talk, they can react to oxygen, to medications
and that is all with that internal programming and modeling within that software within the
simulator actual component. So you see the mannequins but behind the scene are usually
two laptops and even more equipment to actually drive the motion and the movement of the eyes
and the breathing to create that simulated response.
So you mentioned that creates that moment for the students so that they can actually
work with the patient, respond to the patient and see the patient responding to what they
are able to do and how does that affect also how the teachers interact with the students?
It really provides a way for us instead of leading the students to what they need to
do we can stay in the background. We do it by giving the students the cues or the subtle
comments to help direct them. If they don't decide that I'm having, you know, maybe
needing something for pain or something needs to be done, I'll complain maybe in a different
way. I will verbalize it in a different way. Maybe the student will respond or recognize
that, that may be something they need to think about doing. So we can create that learning
in tune to where the student is. We had objectives but my goal is to understand where the student
is and when I see them at the patient bedside then I can respond to their interactions and
help them to understand and to move them to the objectives we would like for them to be
able to understand. And obviously every simulation is unique,
as every patient is unique and is driven by the student's ability to respond to that
patient. Exactly. We have an idea of what we think
what we are going to say or do, but again we are going to respond to whatever the students.
And maybe if the student is struggling or having a little bit of difficulty then we
redirect by our comments. And maybe sometimes we may even bring in a family member that
will help support whatever learning objective if that would help give them a little bit
more information to be able to make the right decision. So this is really about understanding
and utilizing their critical thinking. So this is where it really empowers the student
to see what the outcome is. So if they put on some oxygen but maybe they are not doing
it in the best mode or in the best practice then if they come back and do it again and
they see a better response that is what we want them to take home.
Tell me what programs here at the college use the simulation center.
Well I will tell you that it initiated with our nursing program, but again we have health
care programs for our Respiratory Care students and for our Emergency Medical students as
well. So we provide simulations that thread into any of those classes.
And how do you share what you are doing here with the health care community? Do you have
ongoing partnerships in the community with those organizations?
Well initially we had the simulators and so when the hospitals were starting to get interested
we would load up our simulators and put them in our vans and travel to wherever they were
asking us to come to and I would take some faculty, I would take my the team and we would
go in and actually work with the educators in the hospitals so that we could really work
directly with the staff in clinical, you know the clinical groups there. What I need to
share with you though is they have now really embraced simulation so no longer are we doing
as much transporting but they have now their own simulators and areas for their own simulations
set up in their clinical sites. It has been very good. It has been a really good partnership.
So tell me a little bit about the different models of simulators that you have here. You
not only have adults. No, again Mel was our original one. He came
from Sarasota, Florida so we gave him the name Mel and he came from Mel Cunningham who
was the librarian at the time at the college. And what was interesting is that the librarians
were helping support our initial adventure into buying that first simulator. So that
is how that Mel simulator got started here at the college. But now we have actually seven
adults, we have two birthing moms, we have three five year olds and we also have a one
year old and three brand new babies. So we have three newborns.
You have a big family over here. We do, we have to keep track of them so we
use them constantly between the three programs. We are always, somebody is always being used.
I have really enjoyed how other faculty and programs have really embraced the use of simulation.
So how do the students respond to this? When they enter the program I assume they know
that this is available. How do they work with the simulators?
Well, their initial response Emily is like anything new in terms of learning is that
they are always a little skeptical. They will come in and they will say "this is pretty
scary, I'm not sure if I can...." and look around, I have all these cameras, I have
all the equipment. This is very high fidelity I mean these are the pumps and we use the
actual Cerner computer software in our labs so we build their own patient charts.
They have to access patient information just as they would in our healthcare settings.
And so a lot of that realism makes it a little overwhelming especially for the band new students,
but once they are here they walk away and say "gosh I can do this." And what has
been very empowering is that they really build their confidence because our goal is to bridge
the classroom to our clinical site. We want to provide our students the opportunity to
have gone through our simulation area to really build those skills so that when they are in
that patient room they provide the best care available and that they have had the opportunity
to do it here first. And so that is just a win-win situation for everybody. So the students
really build that confidence and the anxiety kind of goes away.
Simulation here is really about learning. We don't use it particularly for any kind
of evaluation process. We really focus and use a lot of our energy. We have faculty that
are working in groups of two or three students and this is such a powerful time when we can
really create that almost one-on-one learning. And you know that is really something they
don't get anyplace else. So when they enter the hospital room on a
clinical they really do feel more comfortable, they feel they've got experience doing this.
For people watching out there what percentage of JCCC graduates would you say are out in
the field in our community right now? Oh I would say at least 90% go directly into
some direct RN position. Somewhere locally?
Yes locally. And we always have some that are young and will travel off, but the majority
are right here. And I will tell you that our age for our students has a very broad range
so we take the students, you know, the traditional students, but we have you know students who
are coming back for second degrees or they have been doing another career and they find
for whatever reason that healthcare sort of gives them a new outlook and a new opportunity.
And so we have students of all ages. And so we really can provide excellent care for all
of our patients here in the community That is wonderful. What else can you tell
us? Is there anything we haven't touched on that you would like to talk about?
I want again to sort of reiterate about how much simulation has brought the different
schools within healthcare together. It is sort of now we have a common platform that
we all can talk about in terms of our curriculums. It has brought us closer with our clinical
agencies and facilities because we can create some of those same opportunities to share
back and forth and so that really has been exciting for me to see and so the networking
we have become very much a, you know, sort of unified with creating our opportunity and
our work force, I think, is that much better because of how much we have been able to work
together and learn from this. It is a great team effort.
It is. Well thank you Kathy Carver.
Okay and thank you. And thanks to all of you out there for watching
JCCC Voices today from the Healthcare Simulation Center at Johnson County Community College,
I'm Emily Behrmann. (Music)