JACKSON, Tenn. — Feb. 14, 2013 — It鈥檚 not every day that an anesthesiologist and a nurse practitioner fly an aircraft, but 51社区 nursing professors Brian Foster and Brad Harrell found themselves doing just that recently.
But the men were flying a simulator at the FedEx Corp. Air Operations Training Center in Memphis and not a real aircraft. The FedEx center has multi-million-dollar simulators that carefully emulate true flight, so the professors felt as if they were truly in the air, Foster said.
It wasn鈥檛 simply a joy ride. The men visited the training center to learn simulator best practices. Foster, assistant professor of nursing, is working on his Doctor of Nursing Practice from Union, seeking to advance the effective use of healthcare simulators.
Harrell, associate professor of nursing and Foster鈥檚 doctoral adviser, connected with a former colleague who works at FedEx in Memphis. After a long process to gain security clearance, the Union faculty spent a few hours one evening at the training center.
鈥淚t was great to have that level of collaboration with a company that has resources that are probably unmatched even in the world,鈥� Harrell said, 鈥渟o that we could take away a learning experience and use that learning experience to help further the education of people who affect others鈥� lives on a daily basis.鈥�
Training on state-of-the-art healthcare simulators is an integral part of Union鈥檚 undergraduate and graduate nurse anesthetist programs. Each of Union鈥檚 three campuses houses several simulation environments replicating hospital rooms. Electronic adult, child and infant patients respond to treatment and talk to their care givers, allowing professors to create hundreds of scenarios for students.
Interest in simulation as a teaching tool for healthcare students has recently skyrocketed, Foster said, but few researchers are studying how simulators could help healthcare professionals perfect their skills.
鈥淥ther fields, such as aviation, aerospace, the automobile industry and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, all use simulation to measure competency among their professionals,鈥� Foster said. 鈥淣ursing, historically, has used simulation as a tool of pedagogy, or a teaching tool. But what I鈥檓 interested in is how we can use simulation to measure competency.鈥�
FedEx uses its simulators to test pilots鈥� competency in unusual situations. The FedEx pilots sometimes leave simulation experiences 鈥渟oaking wet in sweat,鈥� Foster said, because the experience felt so real.
Foster said the accuracy with which the aircraft simulators replicate every aspect of the true flight experience is the key to the FedEx simulators鈥� effectiveness.
In the coming years, healthcare simulators will need to become better at reflecting human-to-human interaction between caregiver and patient in order to reach the same usefulness for competency training, he said.
鈥淲e鈥檙e slowly but surely making the (healthcare) simulated experience so real that there is emotional buy-in just like the flight simulators produce,鈥� Foster said.
Both Harrell and Foster anticipate rapid growth in the capabilities of simulation technology.
鈥淚 think we鈥檙e still on the very front edge,鈥� Harrell said.