BUILDING TOUR: PRACTICE LABS

Three Nursing Practice Labs provide students with an opportunity to gain experience and confidence in performing a wide variety of nursing technologies.

Patient care stations in the laboratories, designed to closely approximate inpatient areas and stocked with necessary supplies, are available for students to practice both basic and advanced nursing technologies.

Practice using actual hospital equipment is an integral part of the laboratory experience and patient simulators are provided to facilitate clinical skill mastery.

Students receive individual instruction and guidance in key nursing technologies including vital signs, medication administration, intravenous therapy and sterile technique.

Learning in the practice labs is facilitated by SimMan, a computer-controlled patient simulator.SimMan talks, breathes, coughs, moans, and makes vomit sounds. Students can check his blood pressure and his pulse, listen to his heart and bowels, and insert IVs and chest tubes.

Attached to a personal computer and a compressor, SimMan is controlled by a Windows application that lets instructors preset certain medical scenarios and introduce complications with a click of the mouse.

But SimMan isn't the only technological innovation used in the practice labs.

In November 2005, Sunrise Clinical Manager was brought live in two practice labs as part of an ongoing partnership between Eclipsys and the school. The project is designed to teach students to interact easily with healthcare information technology, and learn to use a wealth of evidence-based, best-practices clinical content and knowledge management tools.

The Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing is committed to teaching its students using state-of-the-art technology and nursing informatics.

As faculty member Dr. Patti Abbott puts it, "If nursing education doesn't move into the future, then we will be history."