How to Design an Effective Nursing Simulation Lab: Equipment, Layout, and Best Practices

Nursing simulation laboratories are designed to improve the quality and effectiveness of nursing education for students. Since modern nursing practices and healthcare systems are quite complex, they require nurses to have advanced knowledge, skills, and experience to do their jobs safely and competently. Simulations can help prepare students to deliver top-quality patient care flawlessly in real-life hospitals and clinical settings. 

What is a Nursing Simulation Laboratory?

A nursing simulation laboratory is an educational environment specifically designed to simulate realistic nursing situations. Everything from the layout to the laboratory equipment will help prepare nursing students to treat patients as if they are real nurses. Students can learn to develop effective nursing practices that ensure the health and safety of their patients in various medical scenarios. 

The great thing about nursing simulation laboratories is that they allow students to make mistakes without risking injury to their patients. All aspects of the training are simulated in the laboratory, which means the training exercises and practices never impact real people. Students will use advanced manikins and technologies to confidently learn and perfect their nursing practices. 

The Equipment of a Nursing Simulation Laboratory

Choosing the best equipment is the key to building an impactful nursing simulation laboratory for your students. The equipment helps simulate the functionality and realism of the nursing training for your students. Let’s review the essential pieces of equipment that you should consider including in your nursing simulation laboratory:

1) High-Fidelity Manikins

High-fidelity manikins are full-size artificial humans or “dummies” with realistic physical parts and functions, such as pulse rates, blood, cardiac rhythms, respiration, skin folds, and more. You can find all types of high-fidelity manikins to simulate real patients, including males, females, and seniors. They are a great way for nursing students to practice their skills without worrying about making harmful mistakes on patients.  

High-fidelity manikins are more sophisticated than low-fidelity manikins. They are meant to simulate physiological responses to help nursing students become accustomed to detecting similar responses in human patients, such as heartbeats, seizure activity, pupil reactions, and breathing sounds. They are great for practicing CPR, IV insertion, catheterization, and defibrillation. 

2) Low-Fidelity Manikins

Low-fidelity manikins are more affordable but less sophisticated artificial human manikins. They often simulate the anatomy of a human patient but lack the physiological responses you would get from high-fidelity manikins. Schools with limited budgets or general course guidelines may find low-fidelity manikins suitable for their teaching needs.

Low-fidelity manikins are a great starting point for beginner nursing students who need to practice CPR, face washing, ostomy care, nasal feeding, breast care, catheter insertions, and various forms of injections. All nursing simulation laboratories should be filled with low-fidelity manikins to train their students on different treatments and procedures for numerous health issues.

3) Nursing Kits

Nursing kits contain an assortment of nursing supplies and accessories to perform specific nursing duties, such as wound care, IV maintenance, ostomy care, and health assessments. You should stock your nursing simulation laboratory with kits like these to train your nurses on conducting these specific tasks. The kits will contain essential supplies like medical gloves, dressing trays, gauze bandages, an IV bag, an IV line, vials, skin protective wipes, a blood pressure cuff, and adhesive removers.

4) Medical Equipment

Ensure you fill your nursing simulation laboratory with all the standard medical equipment in a hospital or clinical setting. These would include:

• Adjustable hospital beds with side rails

• Bedside tables

• Stretchers or gurneys

• Privacy curtains

• Diagnostic and monitoring equipment (ECG machines, pulse oximeters)

• IV poles

• Electronic health records software

Filling your laboratory with realistic medical equipment will create the ultimate simulation experience for your nursing students. If they can learn in this type of environment, it will be much easier for them to transition into a real-world hospital or clinical setting without feeling intimidated. 

The Layout of a Nursing Simulation Laboratory

The equipment is not the only thing that should replicate a real clinical environment in your nursing simulation laboratory. You also need to design the layout of your laboratory to include the same rooms and workspaces that would be found in a real clinical environment as well. 

Here are some of the spaces that you should include in the layout of your nursing simulation laboratory:

1) Simulated Clinical Environment

The biggest rooms are the simulated clinical areas where students practice treating patients. These rooms have all the essential medical equipment and accessories, including hospital beds, oxygen, heart monitors, and IV poles. You could segregate this environment according to the various treatments and procedures you wish to teach your nursing students, such as IV insertion, wound care, and health assessments.

Place the appropriate high-fidelity and low-fidelity manikins in each designated location of this simulated clinical environment. The manikins will serve as the patients your nursing students will work with here. 

2) Observation Areas

You should include observation areas next to the simulated clinical rooms. The instructors observe students in these areas and control the scenarios and equipment in the simulation rooms. If the appropriate technology exists within them, they can control high-fidelity manikins from the observation areas. 

For instance, you could design your observation areas to include computers, simulation software, microphones, one-way mirrors, and audio and video systems for advanced and discrete observations of nursing students. Maintaining private and secure observation areas is better to avoid distracting your students. 

3) Medical Supply Storage Area

Every clinical environment has separate storage areas containing all the essential medical supplies needed for treating patients. Create a medical supply storage area for your nursing simulation laboratory that features all the nursing kits, individual medical supplies, simulated medication kits, and manikins. 

The Best Practices in a Nursing Simulation Laboratory

Good layouts and equipment can improve the effectiveness of a nursing simulation laboratory, but those things will not matter unless the appropriate learning practices are implemented. 

Here are some of the best practices to consider for your nursing simulation laboratory:

1) Standardized Scenario Development

Nursing students must learn from practicing in realistic medical scenarios with clear objectives and guidelines. You must develop standardized scenarios with simulated activities to support your course objectives and the expectations of nurses in clinical settings. Before putting your nurses into these scenarios, inform them of the objectives of each scenario so that they will know what to take away from them. 

These could include wound care, medication administration, heart monitoring, etc. As your nursing students become more experienced, you can start integrating these scenarios together to allow them to practice everything they have learned at once. 

2) Adequately Trained Staff

All the staff members and instructors who train your nursing students should have the appropriate medical and teaching credentials, especially in simulated healthcare education. 

For instance, it would help if your staff possessed a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator (CHSE) certification to ensure they know how to effectively implement simulation-based education training to students. The Society for Simulation in Healthcare is the organization that issues the CHSE certification to educators. 

3) Student Evaluation and Feedback

Instructors will spend much time observing their nursing students to see if their skills and behaviors adhere to clinical standards and guidelines. They must ensure that the nursing students implement the appropriate standardized practices to protect the health and well-being of their patients. 

Based on the observations, the instructors will issue feedback and critique to each nursing student to inform them of the strengths and weaknesses in their performances. That way, they will have a chance to improve themselves the next time they practice their skills in the various clinical scenarios. 

4) Simulated Human Patients

Near the end of every simulated nursing education program, you will want to introduce simulated human patients to the nursing students. Simulated human patients are real people who have been trained to play the role of a patient and appropriately react to the actions performed on them by nursing students. 

For instance, if a nursing student makes a mistake, the simulated human patient will know how to react to signal to the student that a mistake was made. Simulated human patients are never in danger because every scenario is still a simulation with placebo medications and supplies that cause no real harm to the person.

Conclusion

Designing an effective nursing simulation laboratory requires the proper equipment, layout, and practices to maximize its educational effectiveness for nursing students. The more realistic you can create the simulation experience, the more educational it will be for nursing students. That way, they will be well prepared to treat patients safely and effectively in real-life situations.

Pristine Medical is one of the biggest and most trusted medical suppliers for schools and students. It can supply your nursing simulation laboratory with all the necessary medical training supplies to train your nurses, such as IV insertion kits, wound care kits, health assessment kits, etc.