Healthcare CPD courses

My name is Dorcas and I'll be your nurse looking after you today. What's really special about here is it feels like we're in a real clinical environment. The main aim is that we ensure that our students have a seamless transition between what's going on in education and what's happening in practice.  

We all wear scrubs, our students come in uniform. We discuss things with our students like professionalism, the way they dress, ensure that they arrive on shift on time. We talk about NMC standards, we talk about the way in which we expect them to behave as a nurse.  

We've got the three hospital wards, we've also got adult intensive care area, we've got a paediatric ward, we've got a NICU and a PICU. We've also got a community flat. We have a really nice room which is where we can teach clinical skills related to venepuncture, cannulation, catheterisation. 

We've obviously got our augmented and virtual reality, we have our virtual ward that we use. It's hands -on the stuff we're doing here. Have you seen one of these before, this machine, ESO versus ATAR?  

The airway position is different for paediatrics. You know in adults we extend the head the whole way back. We say neutral for babies, so it's their chin and their forehead in line and they're looking straight at the seat.  

And then press it on for two seconds, one, two, and then up, one, two, and up. The other great facility we've got here is that every room has a camera in it and a microphone. So we can sometimes be with the students, other times we can leave them entirely on their own and we can use voiceovers or speak through the mannequins.  

So the students actually have to be in this environment and they have to make their own clinical decisions. You have just received an admission from ME. So this is Sarah Saeed. She's a 66 -year -old female who has been admitted due to increased respiratory effort.  

Investigations, he has been diagnosed with community acquired pneumonia. Could you tell me how you're feeling? My chest, my chest is a little bit breathless. I'm just going to check your vital sounds.  

Let's check your blood pressure, your pulse. Do you know if you're allergic to anything? I'm allergic to something but I don't know what. But here I'm going to hold it up and see what is going on. She's on oxygen and the fat sounds are decreasing as well.  

But it's on two litres. Have you done your ABCDE assessment? Yes. The cases that we dealt with or the scenarios that we have to practice on, just like what we see in practice. For example, one of our patients was presented with community acquired pneumonia and then we had to assess the patient.  

The patient was also having difficulty in breathing. At the same time, the patient was on antibiotic, which is called muscle club. It could be that the patient is allergic to penicillin so we had to quickly stop the medication that was able for us to save the patient's life as well.  

The majority of my team is made up from clinicians who are still working clinically and bringing their expertise from the clinical areas back into practice. It's imperative that we do this. We have to protect our students and make sure that they have really high quality correct clinical expertise.  

So this is a place for you to share your experience if you want to share any experience. The debriefing is really, really important because that gets the students to think about okay, what was going on in that situation, how they felt, so some of the students said in one of the scenarios that they felt really anxious, so you relate that back to practice because in practice there are times we feel anxious and get them to unpick and think about what do you do to sort of help you to overcome that feeling.  

If I made an error or I didn't complete an assessment like Mr Step, they're there to kind of show us in the debrief like okay, do it this way or you know, remember your A2E, you have it in your head, just remember follow a systematic way.  

So when I go into practice, hopefully I can take that with me. What we're finding and certainly from our evaluation with students is that they can relax while they're learning rather than being tense in that learning moment because they understand the actual consequence is not as great as it might be in the real world.  

Our students actually then come out ready to deliver and to really hit the ground running and in today's world with the way the NHS is, the way our colleagues are under severe pressure, they really need students to come out with that level of competence, confidence and clarity of purpose. 

In terms of future, there is no question that this is here to stay, this is going to expand, this is going to get even more exciting. I think every nursing student from every university should have something like this.

It's very, very good, it's actually improve our care, when we go out there we have confidence that we'll be able to give better care to patients.