Students at the Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College are getting valuable training as nurses in emergency rooms, labor and delivery floors and coronary care units. But their training isn't occurring in actual hospitals. Instead, they're learning important lessons through virtual reality.
Students start working in a simulation during their first of five terms, before they’re ready to shadow nurses outside of school. The high-tech training takes place in a handful of classrooms at the school’s clinical simulation institute.
“It's hard to replicate real clinical settings or emergencies,” said Katie Jett, a nursing professor who directs the pre-licensure program. “You can go your entire schooling as an undergrad student and not see a baby be delivered or whatnot. So to be able to provide that kind of an experience for students…I think that's really unique.”
The facility has dozens of nursing simulations, including those for CPR, labor and delivery complications and caring for a patient with a psychiatric disorder. The scenarios progress as the student completes tasks through virtual reality goggles.
“It's pretty much the same as being in the hospital setting, where you have to assess not only the patient, but the situation,” fourth-term student Jamori Robertson said. “When you know what to do, it calms you. It also makes it easier for you to navigate things instead of freaking out …the VR helps you know the proper steps to take and how to manage.”
Students make real-time decisions, record vital signs and suggest care plans through the simulations.
“We test out everything in these VRs,” said David Stuerman, a student in his third term. “You want to be very ready for whenever you get to the real world…It's reduced my anxiety when it comes to patient interactions.”
But before they’re placed in a virtual scenario, students work with lifelike mannequins in an imitation hospital room. A professor speaks through most of the dummies, while others operate autonomously. Stuerman said those mannequins use artificial intelligence to talk, cough and “probably have tea parties at night.”
“You can also hook up their arms with IVs…it's pretty awesome. They also have pedal pulses, radial pulses, brachial pulses, Stuerman said. “This is where I feel the most like pressure to do good,” Stuerman said. “When you're in here you have no help. They'll throw you a wrench every now and then, and you just got to work with it.”
Some mannequins suffer simulated strokes, heart attacks or birthing complications. Students help the patient through hologram glasses, which project information about the faux illness. The combination of digital and physical experience prepares students to work in a real hospital, more than traditional learning ever could, program director Katie Jett said.
“You have your kinesthetic hands-on learners that want to touch something palpable, they want to be in a room.. and then you have some students that are naturally inclined to learn via gaming,” Jett said. “You can only get the best of both worlds when you use virtual reality and you use traditional in-person simulation, even better when you could augment it to be both.”
The clinical simulation institute was renovated to include a birthing suite, operating room and several hospital rooms last year. Dozens of lab spaces house interactive mannequins, X-ray-friendly replicas of body parts and virtual reality equipment.
“Students have access to technology that we couldn't even have fathomed 20 years ago when I was in school,” Jett said. “For those that have been in nursing even longer, to see that kind of evolution is remarkable.”
