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We have a wide range of manikins from high-fidelity to low-fidelity to different age, genders and ethnicities. Always providing you with the most life-like scenarios. But what is the difference between high and low fidelity?
High Fidelity manikins are fully interactive and mimic a real person. Believe it or not, you can actually build an emotional connection with them. They take on a lifelike persona and have a name.
These high-fidelity manikins can have conversations with you, blink, track their eyes, and even bleed. You can hear and feel their heart and lungs, check their pulse and monitor their vitals.
They are perfect for simulation scenarios like cardiac arrest, birthing, end of life, and much more.
Our low-fidelity manikins are used for learning and practice. We use them to practice IVs, catheters, feeding tubes, wound care, positioning, and much more. They are primarily used in our skills lab with our undergraduate students.
Sometimes a manikin is not enough. You need a live patient in the scenario with you – either as part of the scenario like a family member or the patient themselves.
We use live, standardized patients when we need to build a human connection. Standardize patients are used in a variety of simulations – mental health, care takers for patient manikins, and much more.
The UNM College of Nursing has a dedicated simulation team. Our team is committed to helping you gain the skills and confidence to practice nursing, in a safe and realistic environment.
We follow best practices and standards from International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning (INACSL). Ensuring we provide you with the safest and most realistic simulation experience.
Expertise is important to us. That is why we have a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator® (CHSE®) on the team, Adreanne Cordova, MSN, RN, CNE, Faculty and Interim Simulation Director.
The team in the control room. Our staff along with other College of Nursing Faculty are behind the 2-way glass in the control room. Watching you along with cameras that allow us to zoom in all the details. We adapt and react to your cues ensuring you achieve your objective. Allowing you to have a very close to real-life experience.
Our simulation center is dedicated to learners. We are separate from the hospital so you will not compete for space.
Nursing simulation is offered at the Interprofessional Healthcare Simulation Center (IHSC). The IHSC is a 28,000 square feet state-of-the-art building specifically designed for simulation activities.
The space includes; 24 clinic spaces - with internal debriefing rooms/ transcription areas, 7 debriefing rooms, 3 acute care rooms, 5 skills rooms with 6-8 beds each, and a community student lounge.
Directions to the IHSC
Map of the IHSC
The inpatient area is composed of 5 rooms that resemble a hospital ward – we also call this the skills lab. Each room contains either 6 or 8 beds with low to mid-level fidelity manikins. The rooms are equipped with all the supplies you would use in a clinical setting – aerosolized medication, simulated medical grade gases, and more.
As a student, you will learn and practice basic and advanced nursing skills before applying these skills and knowledge to real patients. Undergraduates should expect to spend a lot of time in the first semester of their education in the skills lab.
The room is designed for repetitive practive. So you are prepared for human patients.
In the acute care simulation area, you will participate in simulation activities as a professional nurse. You will develop clinical judgment and critical thinking skills. And interact with standardized patients – actors – or high-fidelity manikins to replicate real life hospital and clinic scenarios. The high-fidelity manikins simulate human functions such as breathing, heart rate, and pulse in order to provide a very realistic experience.
Our advanced practice nursing students (FNP, Nurse-Midwives, AG-ACNP) use the clinical spaces the most. They participate as the provider in clinical encounters with standardized patients in order to practice clinical and communication skills. Standardized patients are people from the community who are trained to portray a specific role.
The real learning happens in the debriefing room. You will review footage and receive constructive feedback from your faculty and peers.
The debriefing unpacks the simulation experiences by addressing:
How you felt during the simulation.
Why you made the decisions you did.
Could you have done something better or different?
What will you take away from the practice?
How will you care for a patient?
We use the Simulation IQ system to provide our students with virtual rooms for telemedicine, telehealth encounters, and standardized patient visits. These rooms simulate the patient experience for our nursing students – teaching them to care for patients virtually.
Your simulations take place in an interprofessional center. That means a medical student can be right down the hall. We have even conducted simulations with law students.
It also means that you will be in simulations with more than just your peers. We value intradisciplinary learning between our BSN and APRN students. You might find a cardiac arrest simulation happening with both undergraduate and Adult-Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner students.
The UNM College of Nursing Simulation Center has benefited from the generosity of our donors. It is through their gifts that we are able to deliver high quality educational simulation activates to our students.
Thank you Ms. Brenda Izzi for your donation.
Simulation
Interprofessional Healthcare Simulation Center
Building 200
Room 1404
1 University of New Mexico