Excellence: College of Nursing Expands

by Deborah Laker

The College of Nursing at ORU expanded their simulation labs over the summer to accommodate the program’s increasing class sizes. The process of transforming five office spaces plus a storage room into labs began shortly after graduation last May.

“You can’t produce an excellent nurse without having an adequate simulation lab," says Sharon Willis, Simulation Lab Coordinator. “The scenarios practiced help them to deal with situations and learn how to handle crisis moments before they ever have to do it in a real-life situation. It’s absolutely necessary.”

To offer the students a hands-on approach to learning, the College of Nursing added six new state-of-the-art manikins, each of which has blood circulation, a respiratory system, and the ability to talk, enabling students to practice various clinical scenarios. Apart from these high-tech manikins, four clinic beds for students to assess their own health have been added.

“It makes them so much more competent and confident as nurses," says Willis. “When they graduate, our students are stellar because they are so well prepared.”

After practicing multiple clinical procedures students meet in the debriefing room that has been revamped with a conference table and television. Other areas have been altered into a newborn nursery as well as a high-fatality lab.

In all their nursing care plans, students include an assessment of the patient’s physical needs, mental needs, and spiritual needs. Consequently, they make goals and interventions for all of those areas to care for the whole person.

“We teach our students to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit and to be in prayer at the workplace because the Holy Spirit will lead you," says Willis.

[Note: This article is featured in our Fall 2018 issue of Excellence magazine. To read the complete issue online, go here.]