by Clementine Tousey
As the place where the College of Nursing and Public Health faculty’s decades of experience combine with state-of-the-art facilities to train the nursing leaders of tomorrow, the Nexus Building and Welcome Center will bring innovation to nursing education.
Starting in Fall 2015, when the new building will be open, the ultramodern simulation labs and exam room will feature closed-circuit TV so professors can observe student performance. These facilities will increase the quality of Adelphi nursing students’ education and give them better preparation as they enter the workforce, according to three faculty members who are among the most frequent users of the current sim labs—Maryann Forbes, Ph.D. ’99, associate professor and chair of the College’s Department of Adult Health; Deborah Ambrosio-Mawhirter ’81, M.S. ’95, Ed.D., assistant professor and chair of the Department of Nursing Foundations; and Terry Mascitti, clinical assistant professor and faculty member teaching nurse practitioner students.
Dr. Forbes said that high-fidelity simulations (the ones now utilized in Alumnae Hall) enable a high-tech patient mannequin to model patient-care situations. These have proven to be effective in increasing student confidence, while providing a safe environment for students to practice and improve critical nursing skills, she said. Students, for example, can practice delivering medication, administering IVs, taking blood pressure and inserting catheters on the SimMan, she explained.
In addition to the sim labs, the new facilities will include examination rooms for “standardized patients,” trained actors who will mimic a health condition by portraying a set of symptoms. (The actors are actual people who will come in, possibly from theperforming arts program at Adelphi, but nothing is confirmed yet, Dr. Forbes said.) Thus, Dr. Forbes said, the new labs and exam rooms will give students hands-on practice treating patients and communicating with other healthcare professionals in a realistic patient-care environment.
The Nexus facilities represent a quantum leap from the three simulation labs now available in Alumnae Hall. There will be a whole suite in Nexus, resembling that of a hospital unit. Dr. Ambrosio-Mawhirter said these new facilities will foster active learning, allowing students to bridge theory with practice and gain confidence as novice nurses. The new technology will allow faculty to move beyond the traditional classroom instruction to a state-of-the-art nursing education, she added.
Mascitti agreed that the new facilities will be a tremendous asset to both undergraduates and graduates because students will now have the ability to use more simulation. She maintained that simulation is the wave of the future and that it’s key in the absence of live patients. It allows nursing students to perform various exams and develop treatment plans in a supervised environment. She believes that Nexus signifies Adelphi’s investment in future nurses and nurse practitioners.
