Nicole Barcroft is in the second year of her three-year program as a student in the College of Nursing at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in North Chicago. She plans to become a nurse anesthetist when she graduates.
As a student, Barcroft is already getting hands-on operating room experience on a regular basis, working with everyone involved on a surgical team in the university’s 23,000-square-foot Virtual Health System.
Working in a simulated operating room furnished with the necessary equipment to perform most any surgery, Barcroft said she goes through the entire process on a manikin that blinks and has other lifelike conditions. Breathing sounds can be heard through a stethoscope.
“We do a pre-operation assessment asking the right questions to get a complete history,” Barcroft said. “We do everything that has to be done before surgery, including getting consent. We prepare for any possible emergency.”
Barcroft was among a number of Rosalind Franklin students and personnel explaining the workings of the Virtual Health System after school, and other officials formally opened the facility Thursday in North Chicago, where students learn the collaborative nature of their future craft.
The facility was designed to look like a hospital, with an emergency room, intensive care unit, operating rooms, a delivery room complete with mother and child manikins, an intensive care unit and a hospital room.
Greg Jackson, North Chicago’s chief of staff, said it looks like the real thing.
“When you walk into the simulation center, you cannot help but feel you are truly in a hospital,” Jackson said after the event. “From the ER ambulance bay, to the treatment rooms, to surgery, (it’s) simply amazing.”
Other universities may have a medical school to graduate physicians, or a school of nursing, or a program to educate pharmacists. Jim Carlson, the interim provost and vice president for interprofessional education and simulation, said Rosalind Franklin offers all of those and more.
By teaching people to become doctors, nurses, podiatrists, physician’s assistants, physical therapists, mental health professionals and pharmacists, Carlson said they learn to collaborate in the real-life setting of the simulator before they do it in an actual job with live patients.
“We have all the professionals training together,” Carlson said. “They don’t train in silos. Here they interact across professions, so when they graduate they will have the real-life experience with the network of professional collaboration.”
As important as it is to learn the collaboration that takes place between different healthcare professionals, Carlson said it is often necessary to learn from mistakes. The simulator allows such education before it happens with a human patient.
“The simulator allows the mistakes to happen here so you learn from your mistakes and do not make them on an actual person,” Carlson said.
State Sen. Julie Morrison, D-Lake Forest, helped secure some of the funding for the Virtual Health System through the state’s Department of Commerce and Economic Development — there were other donations as well — said collaboration is an important ingredient of healthcare.
“Rosalind Franklin utilizes these new state-of-the-art simulation labs to train their students as they teach them to work as a collaborative unit,” Morrison said. “That kind of experience produces excellent healthcare clinicians who work together to benefit their patient.”
Though Thursday was the formal opening of the Virtual Health System, students like Barcroft have had the opportunity to experience simulated surgeries for several months. She said she averages one per week.
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Once she learns about the patient’s situation, Barcroft decides what kind of anesthetic is appropriate and gets them ready to administer it. She does not use real medicine. She analyzes circumstances and confers with the other participants.
“There is always something that can go wrong, and we have to be prepared for it,” she said.
Whitney Eigenfeld, Rosalind Franklin’s lead simulations operations specialist, was giving demonstrations in the obstetrics section of the simulator. She explained how a postpartum hemorrhage is handled in the Virtual Health System.
“The baby is already delivered,” Eigenfeld said, pointing to the infant manikin in a small crib. “We have an actor play the father. We keep him calm. We call for a rapid response. These are things that can happen when you deliver a baby.”
Nikolas Vlahos is a second-year student in the Dr. William M. Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine. He has yet to use the Virtual Health System but is eagerly awaiting the opportunity as he progresses through his four-year program.
“Going into this professional setting, it gives you a really good idea of what your career is going to be,” Vlahos said.
Near the emergency room is the back of an ambulance. Carlson said its lights can be illuminated so students can simulate the removal of a patient from the vehicle and begin to handle the situation.
The simulation students do is captured on video. Carlson said it allows them to see what they did and receive feedback from their professors.