Part 1
The Context of Simulation Education Program
Simulation is educational training that replicates real-life clinical procedures in a safe context. Simulation education helps medical students to lessen clinical errors and at the same time, enhance their critical thinking (Fawaz, Hamdan-Mansour, & Tassi, 2018). The objective of implementing a simulation center in this context is to enhance interdisciplinary skills. Interdisciplinary is the most preferred approach to treatment because it reduces possible medical errors and enhances patients’ outcomes. An interdisciplinary approach, however, requires care providers from a different area of specialization to work collaboratively. An interdisciplinary team has to share responsibilities, promote interdependence, and respect individual expertise and autonomy (Fawaz et al., 2018). It is, however, necessary for hospital teams to have the needed professional expertise such as nurse informatics who can interpret figures and data for other care professionals (Holden et al., 2018). Area nursing education programs are not meant to improve patient outcomes but also to foster collaborative working. A health care facility, for instance, experience specific challenges such as patient falls, high nurse turnover, and reduced levels of patient satisfaction. Therefore, educational programs will help care professionals to respond to specific nursing-sensitive indicators. Patient outcomes represent the quantity and quality of care, meant to meet patients’ personalized needs. Hence, area education programs will help nurses to meet the evolving concerns in the care setting.
Informatics Theory: The Application of Change Model
Theories in nursing entail concepts and interactions that assist in designing a framework. The change theory is one of the concepts or theories that help in defining the need for continuing nursing education and training. For instance, change theory helps in explaining different dynamic processes that are integrated to enhance the operations of a health care facility (Wojciechowski et al., 2016). For example, an interdisciplinary team is one of the processes that improve nurse satisfaction and patient outcomes. Change is an integral element of nursing practice. Initiating change, however, can be challenging for nurse managers due to evolving health care settings (Wojciechowski et al., 2016). In particular, the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has illustrated the need for continued education, training, and preparedness of health care workers. Therefore, various factors such as a decline in nursing-sensitive indicators, rising costs, workforce shortages, new technologies, and new diseases necessitate change.
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Starting the Program
An interdisciplinary simulation center offers guided and safer setting for nurses or care professionals to practice real-life medical procedures and medical situations. This program can start as a response to one of the factors mentioned above, such as new medical technologies and workforce shortage. It is, however, vital to remember that education programs have to be within the context of a facility’s goals and objectives. In other words, nurse education must advance the realization of an institution’s goals. Moreover, it is necessary to balance change or nurse education with the provision of care. A nurse leader or manager must act as a change agent. Nurse Managers have the formal power to implement educational programs that support a facility’s goals. According to Kurt Lewin’s model, change has three main phases: unfreezing, actual transformation, and refreezing (Wojciechowski et al., 2016). This approach is useful in implementing change or programs in an organization.
One of the objectives of area nursing education programs is to enhance the work of interdisciplinary teams. Therefore, unfreezing will entail training nurses to work as a team and desist from old working patterns. A nurse leader, however, has to identify the driving forces to overcome possible resistance. One way of enhancing the outcomes of nursing education is to align training with the practice setting (Fawaz et al., 2018). While teamwork increases nursing outcomes, individual nurses must respond to patients’ needs and deliver quality and safe care (Fawaz et al., 2018). An actual change occurs when nurses embrace the interdisciplinary approach. In refreezing, nurses establish a new change as a habit. In general, the purpose of the program is to enhance the skills of an interdisciplinary team. One of the essential members of an interdisciplinary team is nurse informatics. This individual reduces the existing gap in medical technologies (Samadbeik et al., 2015). An interdisciplinary team has to collect and interpret patient data. Nurse informatics are crucial because they interpret ad give meaning to patient data, and hence, increase the understanding of health care data (Samadbeik et al., 2015).
The need for an Informatics Nurse
An informatics nurse is an expert in interpreting patient’s data. Some nurses may lack IT skills. Nurse informatics, therefore, serves a link between medical technologies or IT and clinical personnel. Besides reporting and interpreting patients’ data, an informatics nurse can also perform duties related to quality control, system development, and educating clinical nurses (Holden et al., 2018). In general, the increased use of technology requires nurse informatics who have skills in using new technologies and interpreting clinical data.
An informatics nurse is a vital member of an interdisciplinary team. In addition to training team members how to use technology, they also add value by addressing challenges related to data interpretation. In other words, nurse informatics help interdisciplinary teams to make decisions based on data or evidence (Cookson, 2017). Moreover, nurse informatics can collaborate with other care professionals to build patient databases to improve quality while reducing the cost of medical care (Holden et al., 2018). Overall, nurse informatics and other care professionals interact based on information technology and interpreting data. They assist interdisciplinary teams to understand data, and hence, improve patient outcomes.
Part 2
Simulation Education Implementation Policy
The purpose of this policy is to offer general and specific guidelines for the implementation of simulated nursing education programs. These simulation and education activities aim to improve the role of interdisciplinary teams and foster the skills related to interdisciplinary. The implementation of this program will utilize the care delivery format. The health care system has four levels, which include patient, care teams, organization or infrastructure, and the environment.
A policy in the context of the care system should consider these four factors:
| Patient | Patients have different needs and preferences. Patient-centered treatment guides the implementation of programs. The availability of health care records and quality measures will influence educational programs. |
| The care team | The collective needs and efforts of the care team would improve patients’ outcomes. Education and training must focus on meeting the nursing practice needs. Care teams must focus on patient-centered treatment |
| Health care facility | Health care organizations must provide infrastructure and resources to support care teams. The organization must support changes that enhance education and training. Management must be well-positioned to respond to the medical cost and quality standards. Care facilities must invest in technology and continuous improvement. |
| The environment | Implementing policies guided by the existing health care legislation. Several factors, such as Medicaid, regulation of care facilities, and competition can influence the implementation of policies. |
Source: (Almgren, 2017)
General Guidelines:
This policy is meant to guide all the concerned parties in implementing a simulation program.
The objective is to implement nursing education programs focusing on the four levels of the health care system.
The training programs will be based on the information collected and interpreted by a nurse informatics.
Nursing-sensitive indicators will be the crucial source of data.
The general objective is to devise and implement programs, which are in line with the goals of the care facility.
Simulation Scenarios:
Simulating care situations will involve active participant for all medical practitioners. All care personnel should adhere to the rules contained in this policy document. Interdisciplinary teams should treat all Manikins or models of the human body with care as if they are handling live patients. Interdisciplinary teams should use simulated scenarios as learning experiences and reflect on how to improve their skills.
Debriefing:
Interdisciplinary teams will receive immediate feedback after each simulation scenario. The purpose of debriefing is to provide an ongoing evaluation to enhance practitioners’ teamwork skills.
Lab Behavior and Conduct:
The care team should act in a manner that supports interdisciplinary learning.
Practitioners shall not infringe on the rights, privacy, and safety of team members.
Interdisciplinary teams should not use the assigned equipment for other use other than the intended purpose.
All practitioners should adhere to the recommended dress code.
Equipment Use:
All practitioners must have an orientation to the equipment.
Interdisciplinary teams must notify clinical teams and sign in.
Practitioners must wash their hands before and after simulation scenarios.
Preparation of simulation activities
Presentation of schedules, tasks, and preparation (Jensen, Kushniruk, & Nøhr, 2015)
Preparation the simulation and control rooms.
Gathering and introduction to IT system and clinical teams
Simulation process
Debriefing
The Role of Nursing Informatics:
Collecting data related to nursing-sensitive indicators.
Interpreting data to aid the implementation of effective nursing education
Collecting and analyzing data from the simulated scenarios.
Interdisciplinary Teams:
The purpose of simulation scenarios is to enhance interdisciplinary learning and skills.
An interdisciplinary team should be made up of practitioners from different specialization.
An interdisciplinary team must have a leader.
Reminder:
Confidentiality will be essential during the simulation scenarios. Each individual should sign forms to provide permission for recording and future use of information.
References
Almgren, G. (2017). Assessing health-care system performance against the four core aims of health-care policy. Health Care as a Right of Citizenship , 202-236. https://doi.org/10.7312/columbia/9780231170130.003.0007
Cookson, E. (2017, May 5). How data can save lives: Informatics for health 2017 . BMC Series blog. https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcseriesblog/2017/05/05/data-can-save-lives-informatics-health-2017/
Fawaz, M. A., Hamdan-Mansour, A. M., & Tassi, A. (2018). Challenges facing nursing education in the advanced healthcare environment. International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences , 9 , 105-110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijans.2018.10.005
Holden, R. J., Binkheder, S., Patel, J., & Viernes, S. (2018). Best Practices for Health Informatician Involvement in Interprofessional Health Care Teams. Applied Clinical Informatics , 9 (1), 141–148. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0038-1626724
Jensen, S., Kushniruk, A. W., & Nøhr, C. (2015). Clinical simulation: A method for development and evaluation of clinical information systems. Journal of Biomedical Informatics , 54 , 65-76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2015.02.002
Samadbeik, M., Gorzin, Z., Khoshkam, M., & Roudbari, M. (2015). Managing the security of nursing data in the electronic health record. Journal of the Society for Medical Informatics of Bosnia & Herzegovina, 23 (1), 39–43. https://doi.org/10.5455/aim.2015.23.39-43
Wojciechowski, E., Pearsall, T., Murphy, P., & French, E. (2016). A case review: Integrating Lewin’s theory with lean’s system approach for change. Online Journal of Issues in Nursing , 21 (2).
