$8M Helmsley Charitable Trust grant to College of Nursing will create mobile program that delivers simulation education to health care professionals
By Tom Snee | UI Office of Strategic Communication | 2-3-2021
A new $8 million grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust will help the University of Iowa educate health care providers and first responders in rural parts of the state on procedures they don’t often have the opportunity to perform.
The Simulation in Motion-Iowa (SIM-IA) program will provide valuable hands-on experience for health care professionals using a truckful of state-of-the art equipment and patient simulators.
“We are thrilled to partner with the University of Iowa to bring simulation education to communities across the state,” says Walter Panzirer, a trustee of the Helmsley Charitable Trust. “Our rural emergency medical responders and rural hospitals face many obstacles, including costs, travel distance, and time off to getting critical education. Soon the education will come to them in their communities.”
The declining number of patients in rural areas means that first responders and health care providers have fewer opportunities to practice certain procedures, so they may not be fully comfortable when called upon. Simulation-based education, meanwhile, is expensive and often requires lengthy travel.
“In rural areas, first responders don’t often get many calls for service, so they can go months or years without seeing some situations,” says Jacinda Bunch, assistant professor of nursing, who will co-direct the SIM-IA program.
The grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust to the UI College of Nursing will allow University of Iowa health care professionals to support local agencies educating first responders and care providers in their own backyards for those seldom-seen situations.
“Thankfully, crisis situations do not happen often in most communities, but when they do, rapid responses and skilled, experienced professionals are needed,” says Cormac O’Sullivan, a clinical associate professor of nursing and director of the college’s anesthesia program who will co-direct SIM-IA with Bunch.
The college will use a portion of the grant money to purchase three vehicles, each about the size of a semi-trailer truck and equipped with a simulated ambulance cab, a simulated emergency room, and a control room. University health care professionals will take the education on the road so first responders and health care professionals can sharpen their skills without the expense and hassle of travel.
“They’ll look just like an ambulance or an ER and have everything you’d expect to see in an ambulance or an ER, and first responders can practice their skills in a safe place using high-tech tools,” says Bunch.
The “patients” are technologically advanced mannequins attached to the control room, where educators from the College of Nursing and Carver College of Medicine can change the simulation on the fly by simulating any number of complications. It could be a heart attack, for instance, a severe hemorrhage, or even a reaction to a medication.
Click here to read the full article by UI’s Office of Strategic Communication
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