Program Profile: Nursing Goes High-Tech

For nearly two decades, the Nursing Program at Ramapo College has been developing high-tech strategies to prepare students to become the best nurses in the field. The Nursing Program was the first on campus to begin teaching online in 1999. “We were responding to the needs of our students and the demands of the field,” says Kathy Burke, Assistant Dean of Nursing Programs.

Those early days of online learning paved the way for a comprehensive online and hybrid approach that has influenced the nursing profession around the world. Ramapo has established a partnership with Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology in Ghana. Nursing students and faculty travel to Africa for three weeks to explore the global issues of public health. Technology helps the Ramapo and KNUST partners communicate and plan during the year. Ramapo Nursing faculty also teach some of the courses in Africa via virtual platforms.

The most impressive technological advances in Nursing are evident in the Adler Nursing building, which contains a state-of-the-art simulation lab called Ramapo Hospital. This sim lab is run by Joan Richards, Simulation Director; Debi Nickles, Simulation Coordinator; Kathleen Farina and clinical instructors. The three simulation bays look exactly like hospital rooms. Each has a simulation high fidelity mannequin (referred to as “patients”) in high-tech interactive rooms that include hospital beds, computers, and other standard hospital equipment. Simulations are integrated every semester; they get more complex as students move through the Nursing program, culminating with a Senior Capstone simulation.

The simulation instructors work from the control room, sending simulated medical events via computer. The control room is hidden behind a one-way glass mirror across from the hospital room. The control room contains live video and audio feed of the hospital room, as well as the simulation computer/software. The patient’s vital statistics beep and display live on a screen. In one simulation the patient had been shot in the chest and had just been transferred to the unit. As Joan Richards initiated medical events on the computer, such as trouble breathing, the students responded in their hospital room. They asked the patient questions, listened with their stethoscope, gave breathing treatments, and took vitals. The students entered data into the patient’s chart, administered medication, called the doctor, and more.

Once the hour-long simulation is finished, the students enter the debriefing room and with the instructors reflect on the simulation to analyze the simulation. The debrief closes the loop on the learning experience for everyone. Joan says there is a level of buy-in required by students when first exposed to the simulation lab, but once they cross that threshold they want more. Ramapo’s Nursing students are gaining valuable hands-on experience, learning to think under stress, reflect on real-life experiences in the hospital, and become better equipped to respond to the challenges they will experience every day as nurses. The simulation lab, and all the technology embraced by the Nursing program, gives Ramapo students a unique level of experiential learning that will undoubtedly enhance their careers in nursing.

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