Scenarios Offer Students A Collaborative Learning Opportunity
Interprofessional Education Simulation and Mass Casualty
Scenarios Offer Students A Collaborative Learning Opportunity
By way of perspective, COM lab technician Henry Ruff posed a very important insight: students are most often educated in their respective silos. Medical students with medical students. Nursing students and pharmacy students usually learn by themselves.“ But as they go out into the workforce, they’ re exposed more and more to having to work with others. And communication becomes a vital part that’ s not as thoroughly explored in their curriculum,” he said.
The mass casualty simulations here pictured provide the opportunity for the medical students, PAs, pharmacy and nursing students to work together in a collaborative experience.“ Not just from Drew, but also from external institutions that we’ re able to collaborate with. And the main focus of these simulations is just how they talk with each other, not so much the clinical management of any case. We want them to be able to meet people they’ ve never known before, and to work with them to solve a common case. We give them a bunch of information regarding the cases that they might see and some things that they might have to do there. Because even if we give them this full information, it still comes down through how they decide to manage the situation with each other,” noted Ruff, who works for Dr. Peregrina Arciaga, COM Director of Simulation / IPE and CDU 2024 Academic Senate Outstanding Clinical Award recipient.
As the accompanying pictures show, standardized patient actors are made up and posed in circumstances depicting their need for immediate care. As part of their prep, they are doused with substances that simulate blood and other body fluids. A grimace, a contorted arm or ankle, or state of being comatose helps to create the proper effect for student teamwork, diagnosis, and treatment strategies.
Students engaged in each mass casualty scenario are organized into respective groups with a balance between each of the specializations respective of their professional discipline. Trainers give them tips on how to work together as a team, what roles they should expect for themselves, and what they should expect from the other disciplines. Students are given needed insight as the trainers offer their perspective. Queries about how they feel, and what they perceive as their role provides alternatives as to how they might interact with other healthcare professionals that they may not have met before.
The preparation provides background for the task ahead, added Ruff.“ As the particular simulation unfolds, they can huddle with each other to determine such fundamental approaches as how they want to handle the case, and who wants to be in charge; how they want to delegate roles. Often, they’ re also unsure of what they can ask colleagues to do. There are assignment issues such as how can I manage my job in the simulation, even if they’ re not perfectly comfortable with their own experience in school. They’ re still not sure how they can apply it with each other; or they don’ t want to overstep each other,” he said. There is a lot of interpersonal communication that is otherwise often not explored. The simulation exercise is something that gives them that very nice practical learning opportunity.
“ Learning from the books is very different than experiencing it for themselves,” Ruff added.“ Because another important part that we provide is feedback through the standardized patient actors, who are taught a case ahead of time. The SPs and the students communicate afterward so it’ s not just speaking with each other, or with faculty or staff. They get full feedback as if it’ s a real patient and with a case that also they hear certain things that they might have not expected.”
CDU College of Medicine | PG. 40