The BSN program incorporates simulation as one mode of clinical learning. The Clinical Simulation Learning Center provides hands-on learning experiences in an environment that is realistic, but without risk to real patients.

Using full-size electromechanical human patient simulators in environments outfitted as hospital rooms, ICUs, or other healthcare sites, you will practice assessment, decision-making, and nursing skills in a safe environment. These simulators are life-sized (adult, child, and infant) manikins computerized to ‘breathe’, ‘speak’, have palpable pulses, a heartbeat (normal or abnormal) and other signs and symptoms that simulate human physiology.

Practice sessions with the simulators are videotaped and reviewed to assure your actions are safe, appropriate, and increasingly skillful before you provide such care to real patients. Additional simulation experiences are provided with standardized patients, virtual reality programs, and computer assisted instruction (CAI).

Standardized patients are individuals trained to simulate (or act out) medical conditions accurately and repeatedly to help you learn interview skills, assessment skills, and relationship-based nursing. Simulated experiences will constitute a portion of your clinical experiences.