Nursing Simulation Labs & Skills Labs
As part of your accelerated nursing education, you will complete lab work under the guidance of faculty at one of Marian’s ABSN program sites in either Indianapolis, IN, or Nashville, TN. Our nursing skills and simulation labs afford you hands-on learning experiences that build on your online classes and prepare you for clinicals.
For advanced clinical skills practice, you and fellow ABSN students will participate in nursing simulation labs using computerized medical manikins. These simulations offer a deeper understanding of specialty areas such as maternity, pediatrics and adult health.
The skills lab at Marian’s ABSN program sites mimic a hospital setting, featuring real medical equipment and lifelike medical manikins. Here, you and fellow ABSN students will experience different clinical scenarios and practice basic nursing skills such as tending wounds and checking vitals.
Nursing Simulation Labs
Our simulation labs get you as close as possible to real-world nursing experiences, exposing you to different patient ailments and clinical scenarios. These labs allow you to apply your skills in a controlled, true-to-life medical setting using hospital equipment to “treat” lifelike manikins.
Nursing simulation labs comprise three main components:
- Preparation work for a specific clinical scenario.
- Completion of the simulation under faculty supervision.
- Clinical performance debriefing with faculty.
Overall, simulation labs are an opportunity for you to practice your nursing skills without putting an actual patient at risk. Therefore, we encourage you to ask as many questions as necessary to ensure you understand how to put nursing theory into professional practice. Our goal is to have you feeling confident and prepared when it comes time to begin your clinical rotations.
Nursing Skills Labs
Nursing skills are a part of the foundational knowledge that you will need to succeed as a nurse, so skills labs are a vital component of the Marian ABSN program. Nursing students today have access to highly sophisticated teaching technologies that allow them to practice vital clinical skills in mock, high-pressure medical settings (along with fellow cohort members) without putting patient safety at risk.
As an advanced teaching tool used in skills labs, medical manikins can create highly realistic patient care situations, from giving birth to spurting blood. Medical manikins are excellent educational aids because they allow you to:
- Apply critical skills in high-risk trauma scenarios.
- Learn from and correct mistakes with the help of faculty.
- Practice working with others in interactive patient care strategies.
Preparing for Real-World Experience
It is important to choose a nursing program that offers quality nursing simulation lab experiences. Research shows that simulation labs are highly effective in building critical thinking and decision-making skills—all of which are essential to safe, competent patient care.
