Students take on the "Horrifying Hospital Room"

I am sure we all could have benefitted from this sorta thing. What do you think? Anything to add?http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitt.../s_706756.html

Nursing students at Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus recently participated in a simulation of real-life horrors that have occurred in hospitals.

"It's basically a Halloween attraction," said Janet Knott, an instructor of nursing at Penn State Fayette, about what's called the "Hospital Room Full of Error."

Based on a similar idea from the Penn State Hershey campus, Knott has turned the Allied Health Lab on the Fayette campus into what can be considered a very life-like horror attraction, with six hospital beds and a training mannequin in each. Each station has an example of an error that can be fatal to the patient, visitors and even hospital staff.

"There's over a million of errors that happen every year," Knott said, adding that the training stations contain 15 different errors. "We can manipulate things here without causing harm."

After the errors are set up, it is up to the first and second-level nursing students to identify at least 13 of the errors to pass, but, Knott said, many of the students discovered all 15.

While some errors are obvious -- a patient smoking a cigarette in bed near an oxygen machine, an open bottle of urine laying around, overflowing trash can and biohazard needle box and medications laying around for anyone to take -- there also are errors that the public may not be aware of. Among them are HIPPA law violations with open charts laying around, unsecured medications, patient name mix-up and an oxygen tank leaning against the wall.

"They (nursing students) can apply what they have learned in the simulation lab," Knott said, adding that the students are videotaped and then take part in a debriefing to see how they did. "Nurses should do a general safety survey anyway."

While the premiere for the "Hospital Room Full of Errors" has occurred prior to Halloween at the Fayette campus this year, Knott said she plans on expanding and building on the study tool every semester.

This really is an interesting training technique. It helps to train students to be constantly aware of the situation and look for details. It is a little prescribed in that the student knows there are problems to be found, but done enough times, and perhaps a little more on the sly- then new nurses should rapidly be paying attention to those details.

I see it as a modification of detail training in the military. You get drilled over and over as instructors look for anything wrong, thus forcing you to pay attention to detail all of the time. Though obviously this is less rigorous ;)

We haven't had a simulation lab like this back in school!This might be a good idea...

Excellent! I think I'm going to borrow the concept.

wow this concept is very interesting i hope hands-on simulations in other schools can get ideas from this..