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Nursing Simulation Lab Joins Tech Talk at TechKnowFile 2013

31 May 2013

Seizing the opportunity to showcase technological advancements in health care education, Bloomberg Nursing’s IT department engaged peers and colleagues at U of T’s TechKnowFile 2013 conference. An initiative by the University to promote growth and innovation throughout faculties and all three campuses, this conference on May 9 and 10 provided the IT department with a University-wide platform to present on the “Technical Evolution of the Nursing Simulation Lab.”  As the only health-care related topic during two solid days of lectures, attendees got a glimpse of the impact of technology on improving nursing education, and ultimately patient care.

“When you step in the Simulation Lab and see the students developing hands-on nursing skills through the technology that’s been implemented, you get a real sense of the learning that’s taking place,” says Fareed Teja, Academic Information and Communication Technologist at Bloomberg Nursing. “To show a representation of that through TechKnowFile really opened up the Sim Lab to a broader University audience.”

The 40-minute presentation by Teja, Barry St. Denis, Administrative Information & Communication Technologist, Yashar Bashiri, Technology Support Analyst and Caroline De Angelis, Information Technology Advisor & Project Manager, walked the audience through the capabilities and advancements of the Sim Lab since it opened its doors in 2005. Over the last eight years, the Sim Lab has grown to a 4,000 square-foot, state-of-the-art teaching facility with pan/tilt/zoom filming equipment, hanging microphones, video uploading for sharing and commenting amongst students, and high-fidelity adult and infant mannequins to replicate patients and their conditions. The Sim Lab set-up allows students to practice in a number of different settings including a 12-bed inpatient ward with a large nursing station, a four bed critical care unit, an isolation room, a full operating room, a home care setting and an interview/ambulatory clinic room. Through the technology in the room, students can practice finding locations for injections or inserting IV drips, managing a seizure or using an anaesthesia machine, to name a few, all while the scenarios are computer-monitored and adjusted from a central control room.

The Director of Academic & Collaborate Technologies at U of T, Avi Hyman, was in attendance and shared with the Twitterverse how impressed he was through a series of tweets throughout the talk. After a successful first presentation, the Bloomberg Nursing IT team are looking at ways of bringing the Sim Lab to a wider technology audience and demonstrating how the changing needs of nursing education are being served through technology and innovation.