Collaborating to Provide Simulation: KanTRAIN

While traditional clinicals offer students opportunities to interact with real patients, in-person clinicals vary based on setting, location, and the needs of patients who happen to be receiving care during a student’s clinical hours. Simulated experiences present a method of ensuring students confront a variety of situations in the work environment. Simulated clinicals can also be filmed and reviewed with faculty or other skilled mentors in ways that interactions with living patients in a care facility cannot.

That is why, when a consortium of Kansas community and technical colleges received a Round 4 TAACCCT grant, these institutions had their eyes on enhancing their ability to provide high-quality, hands-on learning in key programs. Each institution—Garden City Community College, Flint Hills Technical College, Wichita State University Campus of Applied Sciences and Technology, and Washburn Institute of Technology—focused on one or two subject areas and used grant funds to create or expand simulated learning opportunities for students. Garden City and Flint Hills, for example, built and equipped new welding simulation facilities, expanding their capacity to welcome new welding students.

The largest simulated learning initiative in the consortium took place at Washburn Institute of Technology in Topeka, which created a new, state of the art Regional Simulation Center (RSC) for allied health students through the KanTRAIN grant. Resources from KanTRAIN helped renovate spaces to house the RSC and financed equipment for four bays, each with a simulated care facility where students could practice new skills. KanTRAIN and Washburn Tech convened local employers early in the process to help design the space and advise on which simulation exercises students should complete.

While partnerships with local employers were already strong at Washburn Tech, the introduction of the simulation lab created room for increased engagement. One local employer, St. Francis Health, hires many home health aides who complete training at Washburn Tech. St. Francis encouraged and helped the college create a simulated home environment and simulation exercises to better prepare home health aides for a variety of situations that might arise on the job, all in a low-risk environment. Thanks to the RSC and a key employer’s engagement in their training, home health aides from Washburn Tech have a wide range of practical experience behind them when they start their first job.

The simulation lab helps train students in many allied health occupations including respiratory therapist, nurse, nursing assistant, and emergency medical technician. Washburn Tech students, as well as students from their sister institution, Washburn University, also use the simulation lab for anatomy and physiology classes.

Employers, including regional partner hospitals, are starting to use the lab to offer continuing education opportunities for their employees. The lab equipment that supports students before they earn a credential or license has much to provide these employers who are working to ensure their workforce stays up to date. Mark Warren, curriculum and support specialist for the RSC, hopes this trend continues and that more local employers make use of the center for employee training exercises.

The biggest annual event for the lab is the “Big Sim,” a day-long, interdisciplinary simulation exercise requiring nursing, nursing assistant, EMT, and home health aide students to work together on one, integrated case. The event has been a big hit with students. Last year, the military brought in a helicopter and worked with Washburn Tech to help simulate transferring a patient in need of being airlifted. While there will be no 2020 Big Sim due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lab remains a central place of learning for current students at Washburn Tech who benefit from simulated clinical exercises while the pandemic makes it trickier to engage in in-person clinicals. Warren hopes that some smaller interdisciplinary simulation events—safer, but still in the spirit of the Big Sim—will be available to students soon.

The college is rightly proud of the facility and the benefits it brings to the Topeka regional health care workforce. “It’s really a jewel of our campus,” Warren says. “Anytime we have people come for tours, we always make sure to show them the simulation lab.” From the early engagement with employer advisors for the RSC to employer use of the simulation equipment, Washburn Tech has created a loop of employer engagement that strengthens both the college and its workforce partners.

Amid the pandemic, colleges across the country have been leaning more heavily on simulated learning experiences to ensure their allied health students get the hands-on learning they need to prepare for a job. Some nursing assistant programs, for example, were able to move to full simulation while traditional clinicals in long-term care facilities were closed off due to COVID-19. Collaboration between colleges and employers to provide space for simulations could go a long way to addressing this need.