Wow, I know this is really old but I'm hardly ever on these boards. Done with the ADN. In my last semester of the BSN now...phew. Regarding the robot/simulator, we have that at both my ADN and BSN programs. There is even one who will go into labor and deliver a baby! It's actually rather hilarious. These are useful tools but sometimes these articles make them sound a bit better than they really are. Just like any tool, they are only so good as the operator using them. So at my ADN program, sometimes the training on these simulators was not so good and they very often became just expensive dummies, not used to the best of their potential. My BSN program is a little better at using them and setting up whole scenarios. They can be difficult to deal with because as a student you don't always know where the line is between what assessment you are getting from paper, a tv screen or even just a nursing instructor and what you are getting from the dummy. For example, our dummies' lung sounds can be auscultated in the anterior lung field, not in the posterior. However, this is only true if the instructors actually turn the chest functions on. So some labs we would go in and everything was off and they would go, oh just read the sheet and verbalize what you would do. Then the next week, everything was on and we didn't know, and they would fail us because we "missed" something on the dummy.
Great tools, but they must be used correctly and CONSISTENTLY.
What are other students' perceptions of these simulators? - Toddy