
Best Practices for Using Wound Care Kits in Simulation Training
Simulation training has become an integral part of medical school teaching. When nursing or medical students need to learn hands-on techniques and methodologies for performing critical tasks, such as wound care, simulation training helps them learn in the most realistic manner possible.
Comprehensive wound care kits are highly effective wound care training resources for students. The kits contain all the tools and accessories that one would have to use to treat a wound. These items usually include some or all of the following:
- Dressing tray
- Sterile gauze bandages
- Syringe
- Additional needles
- CHS wound irritation tip
- Suture removal kit
- Scissors
- Antiseptic wipes
- Medical tape
- Saline solution
- Sterile gloves
All these items in the wound care kit can help simulate a realistic scenario where a student would have to treat a cut, scrape, burn, or other type of wound. Students can use the wound care kit to practice the simulation on a real person or a manikin. It all depends on the resources you have available at your school.
Below are the top five best practices for effectively using wound care kits in simulation training.
1) Focus on One Type of Wound at a Time
Many wound care kits are suitable for treating multiple types of wounds, such as burns, pressure ulcers, lacerations, and abrasions. Rather than overwhelming your students by making them treat multiple wounds simultaneously, try focusing on teaching them how to care for one type of wound per lesson.
For instance, you can customize the wound care kit to include only the tools and accessories suitable for treating that one type of wound. Then, when you are ready to teach your students how to care for a different kind of wound, you can modify the contents of the wound care kit accordingly. That will make the training process easier for them.
As your students progress, you can gradually implement new lessons involving multiple wounds to care for together.
2) Practice on Simulation Manikins
When you are ready to give your students some simulated wound care training, start them on simulation manikins. These realistic, human-looking manikins are designed to help teach nursing and medical students how to perform various clinical actions, such as wound assessment and care.
Since the manikins are unreal, students can make mistakes during their training without risking hurting anyone. The high-fidelity manikins are the most realistic because they can simulate lifelike responses to the wound care performed on them. Some of them can even simulate bleeding and cries for help like a real person would. They have a high price tag, but that is because they are the best manikins for medical simulation training.
If you prefer the less expensive low-fidelity manikins, they can still offer students a quality simulation training experience. The only thing they won’t provide is lifelike responses to the simulated care they receive.
3) Practice on Simulated Patients
Once you feel your students have performed well caring for the simulated wounds on manikins, you can have them begin practicing on simulated patients. It is the next step where they get to practice on actual people rather than artificial dummies.
A simulated patient is a real person who has undergone extensive training to act like an actual patient. Medical schools use simulated patients to help train their students in the most realistic form of simulation possible. Although the simulated patients won’t have actual wounds to treat, they can still simulate having a particular wound to benefit the students.
As the students care for the wounds, the simulated patients will know how to react accurately based on the student’s performance. You will quickly know whether you are doing something right or wrong to the patient. This simulation will help students learn to properly care for wounds based on the simulated patients’ reactions.
4) Assign Teams and Roles
Not all wound care scenarios involve treating wounds independently. As you teach your students to care for more severe wounds in a busy hospital or clinical setting, you will need to give them experience treating wounds as part of a team.
Simulate a real-life wound-care scenario where a team of nurses or doctors must treat one or more patients’ wounds. Assign specific roles to different students and allow them to take on various tasks to care for the wounds. For instance, you could assign the role of a nurse, doctor, observer, and assistant to simulate the scenario.
Training your students in teams can help them learn to work with their colleagues and develop their interpersonal and critical thinking skills in a fast-paced clinical environment.
5) Emergency Wound Care Simulations
Perhaps the most critical simulated wound care training will involve emergency wound care. You must prepare your students for intense and erratic clinical situations where someone needs life-saving care for their wounds. Some examples of severe wounds that you could simulate include wound infections, excessive bleeding, first-degree burns, and large lacerations.
Emergency wound care differs from ordinary wound care because it has more time constraints and a higher likelihood of complications. It is the ultimate way to test your students on how well they can handle the pressure of these realistic situations involving wound care.
You could use a simulated manikin or patient to replicate emergency wounds, but they might not be able to make it as realistic as you would want it to be. Instead, consider experimenting with virtual or mixed-reality simulation training to make these wounds look realistic. If students can see these severe wounds rather than imagine them, it will help test their ability to remain calm and focused while caring for them.
Learn More
Would you like to purchase a standardized wound care kit or individual medical accessories to build a custom kit? Pristine Medical is the top medical supplier in North America. It offers various wound care kits, nursing kits, and other vital medical supplies to assist in your simulated teachings.