New Awards for College of Nursing Clinical Performance Lab

Under the leadership of Dr. Carrie Miller, associate dean for innovations in clinical education, the College of Nursing was recently awarded two external grants totaling $480,000 from the Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC) and The Hearst Foundation in support of the SU CON Clinical Performance Lab (CPL). Funding will provide critical support to the CPL in clinical education of students through simulation-based scenarios facilitated by experienced faculty-clinicians.

The $280,000 in WSAC funds will support the purchase of nine new simulation manikins, enabling replacement of aging manikins, expanding learning opportunities for realistic, standardized, clinical scenarios and increasing the number of manikins for health assessment and skills courses.

Funds in the amount of $200,000 from The Hearst Foundation will further enhance the CPL by facilitating new simulated learning programs focused on emotionally- and technically-complex nursing care, culturally-aware communication and setting priorities within a team-based approach. The grant will support simulation scenarios that employ ethnically diverse trained actors as standardized patients and embedded family members. Simulated relationship-based care enables richer just-in-time coaching in patient and family centered-care than is possible through clinical experiences.

Funding will significantly enhance evidence-based simulation experiences that guide students in translating theoretical knowledge into clinical competence that is responsive to diversity, equity and inclusionary considerations.