The University of Portland will hold a dedication ceremony in honor of the late School of Nursing dean Terry Misener to introduce the School’s new state-of-the-art patient care simulation facilities. The ceremony will take place at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 8 on the third floor of the BuckleyCenter on campus, 5000 N. Willamette Blvd. 

The event is free and open to the public, but advance reservations are required and must be made by March 31 by calling (503) 943-7211 or by e-mail to nursing@up.edu. 

“This event celebrates many things - the inspired leadership of the late Terry Misener, our commitment to the simulation resources for a premier nursing education, and the generosity of great community partners who helped make it all happen,” nursing dean Joanne Warner said. “In all things, we are grateful.”

The School of Nursing has a longstanding tradition of producing some of the most skilled and compassionate nurses in the profession. For more than 70 years, the School’s mission has been to prepare graduates to practice the highest level of theory-guided, evidenced-based nursing in any environment.  Increasingly, learning resource centers (LRC) are equated with top tier nursing school programs. The School’s renovation of its LRC is aimed at ensuring its nursing graduates meet and exceed national health care safety standards.

The DeanTerryMisenerLearningResourceCenter features a fully interactive lab simulation suite intended to maximize student competency and ensure the School’s graduates are the best practice-ready nurses possible. The need for renovation and expansion was a result of the School’s rapid growth in a span of just five years.

In response to the impending shortage of nurses nationwide, the OregonCenter for Nursing in 2001 called on all state nursing schools to double enrollment. The University’s School of Nursing heeded the call by tripling its enrollment over a five-year span (2002-07) and adding a second master’s program and a doctoral program. The School will seat its first doctoral class this fall. 

In 2001, the year the 3,300 square-foot LRC was originally constructed at a cost of $1.1 million, the School of Nursing was graduating 55 students per year. Last fall, the School admitted 171 new nursing students and has graduated around 200 students annually in recent years. Through thoughtful redesign of the existing space, the renovation allows the simulation suite to accommodate an additional 24 students per day, a 40 percent increase from the center’s previous maximum capacity.

The $101,000 renovation, secured through a series of grants and in-kind gifts, encompasses three of the four pre-existing lab areas, highlighted by a state-of-the-art simulation suite that replicates a full-scale patient care room, and includes a control room, patient care room, and two observation rooms that utilize closed-circuit television for live viewing of labs by student peers.

The patient care room includes an adjoining control room equipped with an elaborate computer system that allows administrators to create different clinical scenarios while simultaneously recording all student actions for evaluation. An intercom system allows the administrators in the control room and practicing students to communicate.

The patient care room can accommodate two interactive patient simulator mannequins simultaneously for students to gain clinical practice and demonstrate safe patient care. The patient simulators respire, have pulses, retain and purge fluids, can be altered to exhibit wounds or skin abnormalities and respond in real time to nurse actions. The room can be converted into several different types of rooms, including medical surgery, pediatrics, OBGYN practice, and intensive care.

The new equipment enables students to learn from one another, assist with overcrowding and reinforce the practice of evidence-based skills which ultimately translates into optimal patient care at the bedside.

The School’s learning resource center originally was designed to provide nursing students with experience in conducting patient assessments, delivering care based on those assessments and evaluating care related to patient outcomes. Over time, simulation labs have gained wide acceptance as an optimal clinical practice alternative to live patients, because their technology provides efficient, safe opportunities for teaching and learning.

Prior to simulation technology, nursing students practiced care in a static environment on non-responsive mannequins, or actual patients for bedside practice. Both options were less than ideal, said center director and nursing instructor Lorretta Krautscheid.

“Non-responsive mannequins don’t replicate real-world situations at all, and having students practice on actual patients doesn’t allow us as administrators to adequately control the clinical learning environment,” Krautscheid said.

The renovated simulation suite affords students clinical practice in various scenarios created and controlled by faculty and administrators, without liability risk. Such curriculum control is paramount to addressing a growing healthcare concern: sentinel events - medical errors that can permanently injure patients and, in some cases, cause death. Examples include incorrect administration of medications, wrong-site surgeries and tubing misconnections.

The suite allows School faculty and administrators to fully engross students in the proper recognition of sentinel events, why they occur, and how to prevent them. Such quality control is borne out of the demands of health agencies, the general public and clinical practice partners.

“With simulation, we can make sure every one of our graduates can demonstrate the expected level of competency required to meet national patient quality and safety standards,” Krautscheid said.

The foundation of the School’s learning resource center and its renovation was laid by Terry Misener, the dean from 1998-2007 who passed away unexpectedly last May. Misener, a national figure in his field and leader in the recent statewide effort to address the growing shortage of nurses, oversaw unprecedented growth in the University’s nursing program.