Nursing simulation labs are designed to put nursing theory and skills to work in a controlled, safe environment, along with your cohort under instructor supervision. In sim lab nursing experiences, you will be briefed beforehand, take on mock clinical scenarios as a group and debrief afterward to evaluate your performance.
In today’s healthcare environment, nurses take on more responsibilities than ever before. From coordinating patient care and administering treatment to responding to critical care scenarios, the scope of work that nurses complete is growing in response to the complex needs of patients. Nurses are expected to deliver high-quality care to their patients, which requires honed nursing skills, effective communication, critical thinking, and sound clinical judgment. All these skills begin to form during sim lab nursing experiences at nursing school.
Marian University’s Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program, which is administered at ABSN program sites in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Nashville, Tennessee, has been designed to educate practice-ready, BSN-educated nurses in as few as 16 months. A significant portion of this accelerated curriculum’s learning occurs in hands-on nursing skills and simulation labs.
Discover how to become a nurse quickly with an ABSN program.
What is a simulation lab? What is a nursing skills lab? How do they work together to develop your skills and build your confidence? Take a closer look at the difference between these two types of labs, what you’ll learn during labs, and how they fit into the ABSN program.
What Is a Simulation Lab in Nursing?
A simulation lab in nursing mimics the clinical environment you’ll find at a hospital or similar healthcare setting. It is a fully equipped lab, containing the typical equipment needed for a hospital room, such as IV pumps and hospital beds. Labs also include medical manikins, which serve as a patient and can mimic patient status and symptoms including respiration and blood pressure.
The purpose of the simulation lab in nursing education is to provide students with opportunities to practice working through clinical situations in a safe environment.
Why Are Nursing Simulation Labs Important?
Having a working knowledge of nursing theory and being able to apply that knowledge in patient care are two different things. Nursing labs are designed to allow students to practice skills and techniques in safe, controlled and supervised mock clinical environments. In these labs, students can develop and hone their skills under professorial instruction. When the time comes to apply their skills to real patients, students can do so with confidence.
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The Difference Between Nursing Simulation Labs and Skills Labs
A Marian ABSN student’s lab experience consists of both nursing skills labs and nursing simulation labs. These two types of labs serve different purposes and are set up in different ways but are both vital to a pragmatic nursing education that prepares students to become practice-ready nurses.
Skills Labs
Nursing skills labs are designed for students to practice essential actions and techniques that are everyday tasks throughout a nursing career, such as checking vitals, inserting IVs and performing wound care. The focus here is on developing fundamental nursing skills under the guidance of Marian University’s experienced instructors.
Our skills labs are equipped with the same technologies as found in a clinical environment. While this is similar to simulation labs, skills labs are different in that they focus predominantly on nursing skills, rather than applying the nursing process to develop an appropriate response to a patient care scenario.
Simulation Labs
Compared to nursing skills labs, simulation labs in nursing are designed with more variation, putting each student’s learned knowledge to the test. Often with the aid of medical manikins, instructors will present a group of students with a mock clinical scenario that requires them to think on their feet to see their “patient” through the exercise safely.
Simulations give students less time to prepare, and scenarios can change midway through; the intention is to acclimate BSN students to the types of scenarios they will frequently encounter as a practicing nurse. In sim labs, our students can develop the critical thinking, decision-making and nursing judgment skills necessary for success both on the NCLEX-RN licensure exam and in professional nursing environments.
What Do You Learn in a Sim Lab Nursing Experience?
Sim labs serve as an extension of skills labs, allowing you to continue refining your fundamental nursing skills while also applying critical thinking and decision-making skills to complex clinical situations. You’ll learn how to respond appropriately to scenarios including allergic reactions, heart attacks, and severe bleeding.
Beyond learning how to apply the nursing process and use your nursing skills to provide patient care, you’ll also learn how to function as a member of a nursing care team. You’ll work with fellow students in small groups during each scenario. Once the scenario starts, you’ll be expected to clearly and calmly explain what you’re going to do for the patient and why. Task delegation, communication, and teamwork are essential skills for future nurses to learn.
In addition, you’ll be expected to treat the medical manikin as if it were a real patient. You’ll deliver patient education to it, explaining what’s going on and what you’re doing, and you’ll need to comfort it when it displays pain or other signs of discomfort.
How Nursing Sim Labs Fit Into an ABSN Program
In every BSN program, students learn through a combination of nursing theory coursework, nursing labs and clinical rotations. Nursing theory coursework is meant to familiarize students with essential nursing concepts and knowledge, and clinical rotations provide experience with real-world patient care as students administer supervised treatment under watchful preceptors. At Marian University’s ABSN program sites, students complete clinical rotations with close-knit clinical partners, including Ascension St. Vincent in Indianapolis and Ascension Saint Thomas in Nashville. Nursing labs are the vital links between these two stages.
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Pre-Lab Briefing
Each nursing simulation lab begins with a pre-lab briefing. The instructor will brief students on the mock clinical scenario they will be working with that day. It’s possible for these situations to change on the fly, requiring students to adjust the administered treatments and to change course to best meet patient needs.
Simulated Nursing Scenarios
After being briefed on a selected scenario, students then work to accomplish their stated goals within a mock clinical setting. Scenarios can range from allergic reactions to wound care and beyond, and instructors may interject with updates on sudden changes in the patient’s condition that require a different approach.
The use of hospital-grade equipment and high-fidelity manikins ensures that students’ actions can also be applied to real patient care scenarios they will encounter throughout their clinical rotations.
Learn what to expect during clinical rotations in nursing school.
Post-Lab Nursing Debriefs
After each sim lab, students gather with fellow cohort members and their instructors to evaluate what went well and what could have been improved within the lab scenario.
We encourage students to analyze their own performance in addition to the performance of those who were in the lab alongside them. Marian’s ABSN instructors will press students to search for alternate paths they could have taken to ensure the highest quality patient outcome. With concrete examples that highlight areas of improvement, students can learn as much after the labs as they do during them.
Take the First Step Toward Your BSN Degree
With a better understanding of what you will learn in nursing simulation labs, as well as how your lab experiences can lead to successful clinical application of your skills, the next step of starting your nursing career falls to you. If you have a completed non-nursing bachelor’s degree, you could be eligible to apply to our Catholic university founded on Franciscan values. Here, you’ll benefit from a close-knit nursing cohort, Academic Success Coaches and attentive instructors.
Contact an admissions advisor at Marian University today to find out if our ABSN program is right for you.