Recently, Jumana Mascati, Business Segment Head at Conquer Experience, had the opportunity to interview Amy Boone. Amy is a Service Line Administrator at Metro Health Systems in Cleveland, Ohio, USA and was formerly the System Director of Perioperative Services at the University Hospitals in Cleveland. Amy shared her experiences with simulation in her training programs at both hospitals and also gave us feedback on using PeriopSim VR! Here is what she had to say:
What appealed to you most about the PeriopSim VR Technology?
I love the fact that it's such an attractive learning environment for our younger nurses. When I was a young nurse, we learned by putting our hands on things and it wasn't always easy. Surgeons are not always receptive to having a learner in the room and so it can be extremely stressful when you walk in. This is a great way of providing a virtual experience that does not involve that kind of culture of unwelcome behaviour that you can sometimes see on the part of the training team.
When you're training a new OR Nurse or a new Surgical Tech in a real environment with a real patient, sometimes things don't go as planned. So the stressful situation becomes less of learning and more of trying to get out of the way. I love Virtual Reality (VR) and Simulation because it's a much lower stress level. If they make a mistake, there's no one to be on the receiving end of the mistake who can be short tempered or make them feel embarrassed for choosing the wrong instrument or handing it improperly. By the time the Learner enters the OR, they have a level of expertise that really puts them in a better position to be successful. That's really the recipe for success - when you can walk into the room and not be the 'deer in the headlights!'
Your OR Clinical Educators had a chance to trial our Travelling VR Kit a couple weeks ago. What was the feedback from that session?
They were just so excited about it! The term awesome was used a lot. We have a senior educator and a more junior educator. The younger educator was so enamoured and I think that's one of the things that I love about it. As our recruitment population gets younger and younger, it's much more similar to video games and a lot of the technology that they're used to and it is so much more fun. I found that a lot of our orientees are going through and finishing modules so rapidly that they can't wait to get to the next one. It's a great way to make learning such a positive and entertaining experience and it's wonderful. We've had really great feedback.
Tell us about how you're planning to integrate PeriopSim into your program at MetroHealth.
I'm really happy here at MetroHealth. We have a significant commitment to orientation for the nurse with no OR experience for around six to eight months. I think that's wonderful. I'm really grateful to our senior leadership for providing us with that commitment. We do have the opportunity for the newer nurses to be reviewing the modules in their own time and learning the process of the procedure.
It's not just about handing the instruments, it's about what are we doing in there and why are we doing it. I love having the right resources around Simulation and the fact that they can watch the entire procedure from start to finish. They're understanding a lot more about what it is they're doing and why, and then they really learn the importance of how you hand instruments and the anticipation of what's going to be needed next. I think those are all really important pieces.
Our plan is to incorporate this additional awesome tool in the orientation of our new nurses and surgical techs. The hope is that we can really make our orientation far more robust at all stages, so that when the six or eight month milestone arrives, they're very confident and don't have that terrible stressor of "Are you going to leave me all alone?" At that point it's much more like "Hey, I've got this, I'm good."
The ability to track and then collect data around the progress of a learner is so important. Having the ability to put together data on how to show how a nurse was able to master these simulations in a certain amount of time and connecting that with the real reality of how they succeeded once they were in the OR is going to be huge for us. I'm really excited about what we're going to find as we go forward.
How do you plan to measure success?
Our goal is to involve the physician champion into our education and training program so that we can get feedback from that group as well. Our hope is to gather data that we can now collect with your help in regard to the modules which have been completed as well as the scores that are being produced, and then connect that with real time feedback we're getting from the preceptor and surgeon that's working with that new orientee.
Any suggestions and recommendations for other PeriopSim OR Clinical Educators and Directors going forward?
I'd say give it a try! When we first started talking to Angela, a group of us went to AORN and found the PeriopSim booth. One of my educators tried on the headset and she loved it so much, and it was so fun. I think it was at that moment that everybody on my team was absolutely bought in when they realized how fun it was and that our new employees who are so stressed doing something so completely new and different, could actually have some fun while they're learning. It just really makes a difference and it's really amazing how they just can't get enough of it.
To watch the whole interview with Amy, click the link here.
