Turning lemons into lemonade: The GSN develops new ways to train students
"Sometimes you just need to make the best of what you have...sort of like making lemonade from lemons," said Army Col. Elizabeth Vane, assistant professor with the Graduate School of Nursing's Perioperative Clinical Nurse Specialist program. And that's what Vane and her team did when their planned operational readiness exercises, which normally occurred during Operation Bushmaster, changed.
"We're a small yet up and coming program," said Vane, "and our unique training needs sometimes leave us at the mercy of others. So when the Department of Military and Emergency Medicine (MEM) took the operating room elements away from Operation Bushmaster, we had to identify other means for training and testing our students."
Taking full advantage of the resources available at the National Capital Area Medical Simulation Center (Sim Center), the clinical and teaching support from colleagues at Malcolm Grow Medical Center and at Fort Dietrick, the team from the Air Force C-STARS program from the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, and the knowledge and skills of MEM staff, Vane said the students received so much more than they ever would have at Bushmaster.
"Students had the realistic sights and sounds made possible by using the Wide Area Virtual Environment (WAVE) at the Sim Center and the personal attention of nearly 50 trainers for five students, which wouldn't have been possible within the Bushmaster exercise," said Vane.
Students participated in six stations that included clinical skills, code of conduct, law of war, and other operational readiness assessments, during the full-day exercise. "The students were exposed to all types of contingency exercises that they might find themselves in after graduation, including combat, peacekeeping and humanitarian," said Vane.
The Sim Center will host an Open House for the USU community on October 4.
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Navy Lieutenant Commander Pamela Wall, director of USU's Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner program, recently spoke at a Joining Forces event held at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is working toward a Doctor of Philosophy.
"The Joining Forces initiative is important, because it provides America's nurses with the education, information and sensitivity they need to recognize and treat conditions that are unique to military and veteran populations," said Wall, who was hand-selected by the dean of Penn's nursing school to talk about her nurse corps experiences.
At the event, Wall also introduced first lady Michelle Obama, another Joining Forces guest speaker, who called nurses the "frontline of America's healthcare."