CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Third-year students from Austin Peay State University’s schools of Nursing and Radiology joined forces on Wednesday for interdisciplinary simulation exercises, providing vital experience in real world practice.
Third-year students from the two programs were placed in groups and given scenarios to act on. The first of these scenarios involved a human actor playing the part of a patient who had recently suffered a seizure.
Students were tasked with checking the patient’s condition and performing an X-ray. Their scenario was turned up a notch when their patient surprised them with a second seizure in the middle of the scenario, necessitating quick thinking from the nurses and rad technologists in training.
In the second scenario, students interacted with a high-tech, animatronic dummy simulating a COVID-19 patient with complications from pneumonia.
Radiology program director Jennifer Thompson said this is the first year rad tech students have been able to participate in joint simulations, an opportunity she said makes both groups stronger.
“Learning how to communicate between each other to create a team environment is great,” said Thompson. “But really, for APSU and the health profession, a long term goal is to change the culture in healthcare to separate the boundaries in-between each profession.”
According to simulation and lab coordinator Cindy Meyer, such exercises are vital for student’s growth, teaching them to work with peers in other disciplines and react to scenarios in real time.
“They don’t always get that opportunity in their clinical setting. It’s very important for them to learn to work together with other members of a healthcare team, because that’s how we get our best patient outcomes,” Meyers said.