Reflecting the Reality of Healthcare
Experience what it’s like to be a working nurse firsthand in our award-winning Simulation Center. At Ashland University’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences, we believe that experiential learning shapes the minds and futures of our students. Through simulation, we can expand their knowledge by teaching the basics of nursing care, nursing skills, delegation of patient care to appropriate care providers and prioritization of patient care.
What is the Simulation Center?
The Simulation Center, is an innovative, award-wining instructional program and learning center that provides challenging and immersive simulation training for nursing, physician assistant and health science students. Simulators interact with students in realistic clinical settings to complement clinical practice.
The multidisciplinary Simulation Lab offers the following features:
- 32 HillRom® beds and headwall units that mimic a fully-functional hospital unit
- Simulators, or manikins, programmed to give realistic patient responses and outcomes
- Exam and treatment rooms using the same equipment found in medical practice
Simulation Center Labs
The Simulation Center consists of a variety of labs to expand the experience of each student, no matter their intended specialty.
Health Foundations Lab
You will begin your experience at the Health Foundations Lab and continue throughout the program. This lab houses up to eight8 beds that are potentially occupied with patients (manikins) to learn proper patient care. These are low-fidelity manikins, which will allow you to hear basic sounds from the heart, lungs and bowel.
Adult Health Lab
Your journey will advance to taking a more active role within the simulation environment as you begin interacting with mid- and high-fidelity manikins.
You will also dive deeper into medication dispensing and learn the difference between charge items vs. non-charge items.
Complex Health Lab
Throughout your time at the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, you will continuously fine-tune your skills and abilities. Ashland’s caring faculty will provide you with the proper training to handle a multitude of tasks professionally and confidently. You will learn how to speak with patients about their health concerns. Your experience will take you from caring for one to four beds at a time.
OB Lab
In the OB Lab, you will learn about delivering babies and how to care for the mother and the baby.
Pediatric Lab
In the Pediatric Lab, you will practice handling babies and caring for young children, including administering medicine.
You can also practice the skill of educating parents and guardians.
Community Health Lab
The Community Health Lab offers a simulated home environment that allows nursing students to practice their community health skills in a life-like scenario.
Intensive Care/Advanced Care Lab
Your training will take you to the Intensive Care and Advanced Care Labs.
In the Intensive Care Lab, you will gain hands-on experience caring for patients with more specialized needs, this time without instructors or professors.
Here you will encounter patients with a variety of concerns, such as memory loss, blood complications, vehicular accident trauma and end-of-life distress.
Examination Rooms
Nursing students use exam and treatment rooms similar to those found in doctors’ offices to simulate treatment of patients with the same equipment used in actual medical practice.