Beyond Nurse Residency
The Iowa Online Nurse Residency Program brings you the Beyond Nurse Residency Podcast. This interview series provides valuable resources for nurse leaders and educators interested in learning about onboarding, orientation, transition to practice, and ongoing role development of nurses. It is intended for all healthcare professionals supporting various aspects of nursing professional development. Each episode features an expert guest, providing listeners with valuable insights and guidance on relevant topics related to the professional role development of registered nurses.
If you're looking for more information about our program offerings, be sure to check out our website. Additionally, if you're interested in being a guest on the Beyond Nurse Residency Podcast, we invite you to fill out our guest request form. We're always excited to feature new perspectives and insights on the show!
Beyond Nurse Residency
Simulation in Motion – Iowa: Bringing High-Fidelity Training to Rural Communities
In this episode of the Beyond Nurse Residency Podcast, host Nicole Weathers sits down with Dr. Jacinda Bunch and Dr. Cormac O’Sullivan to explore the innovative work of Simulation in Motion – Iowa (SIM-IA). Learn how mobile simulation units are transforming clinical education in rural hospitals and EMS services across the state, and how a new collaboration with the Iowa Online Nurse Residency Program is helping new graduate nurses build confidence and competence in high-risk, low-volume scenarios. From OB hemorrhages to pediatric emergencies, this episode highlights the power of simulation to improve outcomes, foster teamwork, and ensure equitable care—no matter where nurses practice. SIM-IA Website • SIM-IA Facebook
GUESTS: Jacinda Bunch, PhD, RN, SANE-A, NREMT
LinkedIn Profile • UI College of Nursing Profile • Article
Jacinda Bunch, PhD, RN, SANE-A, NREMT, is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa College of Nursing and co-senior advisor for the SIM-IA program. With 30+ years of nursing experience, she earned her EMT certification in 2022 to better support first responders.
She is president of the International Society for Rapid Response Systems, a sexual assault nurse examiner with JCSART, and a first responder and service director with the Oxford Fire Department. Her research focuses on patient safety and rural healthcare, and she teaches simulation-based and leadership courses across nursing programs.
Dr. Bunch received the collegiate teaching award in 2021 and co-led the SIM-IA mobile simulation grant to enhance rural EMS training statewide.
Cormac O'Sullivan, PhD, ARNP, CRNA, FAANA
LinkedIn Profile • UI College of Nursing Profile • Article
Dr. Cormac O’Sullivan, Professor (Clinical) at the University of Iowa College of Nursing, has been educating nurse anesthesia students since 1996. As Director of the Anesthesia Nursing Program since 2009, he led its transformation into one of the first Doctor of Nursing Practice anesthesia programs in the country. A passionate educator and innovator, he received the Collegiate Teaching Award in 2018 and was named Anesthesia Program Director of the Year by the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists in 2019. He developed the first crisis simulation workshops for the AANA annual meeting and currently serves as Senior Advisor for Simulation in Motion – Iowa (SIM-IA), a statewide initiative delivering high-impact simulation training to rural emergency and critical access providers.
Dr. O’Sullivan is a Fellow of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists and an active contributor to national nurse anesthesia leadership. He is a past president of the NBCRNA, serves on the editorial board of the AANA Journal, reviews programs for the COA, and participates in multiple committees and task forces for the AANA Foundation.
Supporting nurses is our priority. Visit https://nursing.uiowa.edu/ionrp to explore our resources for new graduate nurses and beyond.
00:00:01 Nicole Weathers
You're listening to the Beyond Nurse Residency Podcast, an educational series where we interview experts on all topics related to the transition of new graduate nurses into practice and beyond. I'm your host, Nicole Weathers, director of the Iowa Online Nurse Residency program. Thanks for joining us. Let's jump in.
00:00:24 Nicole Weathers
I've been working in nurse residency for over a decade now, and every so often a collaboration comes along that shifts your perspective and makes you rethink what's possible. That's exactly what happened this past year, as we partnered with the team behind Simulation in Motion – Iowa. Simulation has came a long way since I first entered nursing. Back then, it wasn't even part of my education, or at least the high-fidelity simulation that we think of today.
00:00:49 Nicole Weathers
Now it's embedded in academic programs and it's showing up in some of the most unexpected places. What makes SIM-IA stand out is its commitment to rural, or at least for me, that's what makes SIM-IA really stand out. This isn't just about high-tech mannequins or fancy labs, but it's about meeting nurses and other healthcare providers where they are.
00:01:10 Nicole Weathers
And designing experiences that build confidence and clinical judgments in places that can oftentimes be overlooked.
00:01:17 Nicole Weathers
Through a recent collaboration between our nurse residency program and SIM-IA, we've seen firsthand how simulation can support new graduate nurses in rural settings and how scalable and thoughtful design can really make a big difference. In today's episode, we're going to explore the story behind SIM-IA, what makes it unique?
00:01:37 Nicole Weathers
Our collaboration together and why rural outreach is so important.
00:01:42 Nicole Weathers
My goal for this episode is for our listeners to walk away with actionable steps they can take to improve their practice and start making incremental changes in their own organization. So today, I'm thrilled to welcome 2 very special guests, Cormac O'Sullivan and Jacinda Bunch. Welcome to both of you. Why don't we start off by having each of you just take a minute to introduce yourselves and your role here with SIM-IA.
00:02:08 Cormac O’Sullivan
OK, this is Cormac and I am one of the senior advisors for the SIM-IA program. I was there in the beginning.
00:02:16 Cormac O’Sullivan
I run the anesthesia nursing doctor nursing practice toward up at the College of Nursing, and we have been doing simulation in small rural hospitals around the state for mostly perioperative emergency.
00:02:28 Cormac O’Sullivan
And we are going.
00:02:29 Cormac O’Sullivan
Out and how to just doing them one at a time and one of my colleagues said we would, you know, we just need a truck so we can do this more efficiently.
00:02:37 Cormac O’Sullivan
And lo and behold, about six months or so later, uh, an offer came through from, I believe it was the State Department of Public Health.
00:02:47 Cormac O’Sullivan
Offering a mobile simulation interest and I looked it up and I read about it and I thought, hey, I'll, I'll apply for that program. So we started putting a application together and send it in and we were lucky enough that there was some time that lapsed. And COVID unfortunately happened and took us a while to get up and running.
00:03:07 Cormac O’Sullivan
But they eventually decided they wanted us to run the SIM program and kind of during the time lapse, I said, you know, I don't think I'm really ready to do this by myself. And I called Jacinda and I said, I think there's something I might be willing to get us into if you would be willing to help me. And so then we'll just let Jacinda tell you how she got stuck with me.
00:03:25 Jacinda Bunch
Hi I'm Jacinda and I'm a clinical assistant professor with the College of Nursing and also a senior advisor with Simulation in Motion - Iowa.
00:03:34 Jacinda Bunch
As Cormac said, I came on very early in the process before we had really got our final plans that kind of did what we were doing. Part of the discussion was is this something that's needed in Iowa or is this something that we just think would be really cool.
00:03:51 Jacinda Bunch
And really kind of looking to see what the scope was across the state, what the needs were.
00:03:56 Jacinda Bunch
Like Cormac said, we developed the grant. We got it up and going. We hired a fabulous staff that does a lot of the day-to-day operations that Cormac and I still serve in the senior advisor role, kind of helping to guide division, looking at funding, sustainability and those kind of high level conversations.
00:04:14 Nicole Weathers
Well, I am really excited to get into this conversation and share a little bit more about this with our listeners. So you started to touch on this a little bit as far as.
00:04:25 Nicole Weathers
The inspiration behind this, but what can you tell us? I think we should just rewind, start at the beginning a little bit. So what exactly is SIM-IA? I know I've already started abbreviating the terminology and acting like all of our listeners know what this is already, but why don't we start at the beginning and have you just share more about what it is a little bit more maybe if you have, around the creation of the model and how it all got started?
00:04:52 Cormac O’Sullivan
Sure. So SIM-IA stands for Simulation in Motion – Iowa.
00:04:57 Cormac O’Sullivan
And it is three large trucks about the size of a small semi or a large Winnebago. They can duplicate a square box ambulance on the back end, a full-sized ER 12 x 12 room on the front end and in the middle we have a Simulation Control Center. We do a lot of simulation at the University of Iowa.
00:05:17 Cormac O’Sullivan
For our nurses and our students and things like that and my graduate students rotate to a lot of small rural community hospitals because that's where a lot of CRNA’s work. And they came back telling me how they never really got to do much simulation when they were.
00:05:32 Cormac O’Sullivan
Out there. And so we were doing some crisis management simulation for perioperative emergencies, a code blue in the OR, a hemorrhage, something else.
00:05:43 Cormac O’Sullivan
And we realized that the resources weren't out there and we thought, you know, that's not fair. We should bring resources out to these other hospitals. And as you mentioned earlier, with high fidelity simulation, you need a lot of fancy equipment that is really expensive. And so we started looking at, How could we do it and then the offer from the state to try and help develop program came along.
00:06:06 Cormac O’Sullivan
And it turns out that this great foundation, called the Helmsley Foundation, after Leona and Harry Helmsley, was supporting this type of work.
00:06:16 Cormac O’Sullivan
We decided to figure out what Iowa needed and we did. A needs assessment, looked at the rural hospitals, what types of emergencies were happening out there, and while we were doing that, we realized that the emergency medical services providers.
00:06:28 Cormac O’Sullivan
In rural Iowa are mostly volunteers have no funds for continuing education.
00:06:34 Cormac O’Sullivan
A lot of the rural hospitals had very minor budgets for it and we thought, OK, we can figure something out and take the expertise that we take for granted at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics and get it out there and spread it around.
00:06:48 Cormac O’Sullivan
And so that's kind of where we started from. We've learned a lot over the three years, you know, even the small budgets they had when we started the project evaporated during the pandemic and they have virtually nothing anymore. We originally thought they could pay us a small amount to help do the simulations
00:07:04 Cormac O’Sullivan
and that just isn't it isn't existent. So we were fortunate enough to get a very nice grant to get up and running from Helmsley. It helps support the first three years of the program, due to some financial excellent management by our director, we've been able to extend that out and we're getting additional grants as time goes on. We hope to be able to run this.
00:07:24 Cormac O’Sullivan
program forever. We deliver standardized education across the state for the emergencies. There is an educational coordinator that sort of looks at what are the big things happening in healthcare these days, puts together the simulations and then disseminates out to the lead educators we have in each of the three trucks and then trucks go out to any hospital.
00:07:44 Cormac O’Sullivan
Any EMS service, any small institution, any high school, any anywhere that wants some education, we don't.
00:07:50 Cormac O’Sullivan
Care where we go.
00:07:52 Jacinda Bunch
And when we're talking about high fidelity simulation and like you said, Nicole, maybe backing up just a little bit for some of the listeners, what we're talking about are full-sized mannequins that we have an adult male. We have an adult female that can give birth. We have a child that's around 7 to 8 years old.
00:08:11 Cormac O'Sullivan
It has attitude.
00:08:13 Jacinda Bunch
It has attitude sometimes. We have a newborn and then we have a pre term a 25 week per term baby. So all of these mannequins have a little bit different features but the basic similarities stay the same in that they have heartbeats, they breathe, you can intubate them, you can give them medication, you can do treatments.
00:08:33 Jacinda Bunch
You can do all the hands on care that you would do with your normal patient in real life, you can run through protocols. You can practice skills. Our mannequins talk to you. As long as they're old enough.
00:08:47 Jacinda Bunch
Obviously, the baby doesn't respond in full sentences, but will cry and so our providers are having to get, assess their patient directly from those mannequins. They can see real time how those patients are simulated patients respond to the treatments, respond to the questions.
00:09:06 Jacinda Bunch
And it's really as close to life like giving medical care as you can find outside of actually doing it with a live patient for the first time. So it allows us to do some scenarios that aren't seen as often or those that are really critical or new skills or implementing new processes.
00:09:24 Jacinda Bunch
New graduate orientation, all of those types of things are kind of really valuable in that setting.
00:09:46 Nicole Weathers
I think why I love this idea of SIM-IA so much is because I was one of those rural educators in my previous life who was like 0 budget, don't have the resources for simulation. We had a couple options. We had a truck from another state that we could pay to have them come.
00:09:51 Nicole Weathers
Down we had a local, was somewhat local, probably about an hour and a half away where we could load nurses up and drive them down to their simulation lab to use that or there was an opportunity to where it was like they would send me the simulator and I would set it up inside the hospital and run it. But I didn't have the expertise.
00:10:11 Nicole Weathers
For many of those things, right. So I think what I love so much about this is that you guys come out into the rural areas, you bring your expertise, you bring the supplies and through generous donations.
00:10:25 Nicole Weathers
It's not costing the organizations much, if anything, to have you do that. And so I think it just checks so many of the boxes of challenges that these, you know, educators and nurses and other clinicians that are working out in these rural hospitals continue to face and like as you're as you're talking about some of these examples of your simulators and what they can do it.
00:10:46 Nicole Weathers
It's. Oh yeah. We've had all of those situations right. The pre term labor.
00:10:52 Nicole Weathers
I even have a friend who's a nurse who's on the volunteer ambulance and they actually had a pre term birth out in somebody's home. That was 30 minutes from the hospital. And even though she was a nurse and she was somewhat trained to respond to these types of situations.
00:11:11 Nicole Weathers
You know, doing so in somebody's house poses a whole different set of circumstances. And so the fact that you're actually out there simulating some of these very low volume, high risk things, I think is just amazing for these providers to get, just get more comfortable and confident in what they're doing.
00:11:32 Jacinda Bunch
I was gonna say, one of the things that we found is when we did that needs assessment that Cormac talked about, we went out and we talked to hospitals all across the state. We had all of the regions. We did focus groups, site visits, surveys. We really just tried to gather a lot of information and we talked to several hospitals, several rural hospitals who had written.
00:11:53 Jacinda Bunch
Grants to buy a simulator or like you said, have someone ship one in temporarily that require that they send someone to training to learn how to operate them. How do you write a good simulation? How do you come up with good objectives? How do you do all the things to really get those learners toward the goal?
00:12:12 Jacinda Bunch
And what frequently happened actually? What had happened in every case that we talked to is that nurse that was trained had left. They either got a promotion and they were no longer in education, they moved away from the area with family or something had happened where they were no longer there and that simulator.
00:12:32 Jacinda Bunch
That they have purchased with these grand ideas of doing mock codes and doing your rapid assessments. You know your rapid response teams on the floor and doing all of these practices.
00:12:43 Jacinda Bunch
That simulators now in the closet and it's just collecting dust, and if they pull it out, it's for their one year competencies and it's very basic because they just don't have the time or bandwidth to really dedicate to skill, the expertise that is creating and running simulations.
00:13:04 Jacinda Bunch
So those grants were great, but they didn't really serve long term purpose. And so that's where we have the skills, we have the skilled educators, we have the equipment and we can bring it out, tailor it to their local protocols because we don't want to come in and tell people you have to change to the way the University does things.
00:13:24 Jacinda Bunch
But what is your protocol for this? What are your procedures? What medications are you using and let them practice those things that they need to be doing in real life.
00:13:32 Cormac O’Sullivan
The other thing you touched on, Nicole, that's really fascinating and very beneficial is.
00:13:37 Cormac O’Sullivan
We go to your facility and we run the simulation at your facility and if your equipment isn't working, you will, you know that.
00:13:44 Cormac O’Sullivan
We've had situations where security sort of locking a door out into the hallway without telling anyone else for safety purposes, and that's where the emergency people were supposed to come from. We were doing an OB hemorrhage and the nurses all responded.
00:13:58 Cormac O’Sullivan
From the ER to help out. They didn't have access to the Med fridge in the OB ward.
00:14:01 Cormac O’Sullivan
We had another one where they needed emergency airway equipment and then when they opened the drawer it wasn't there because they hadn't opened that cart in a period time. If you went to a big SIM center, everything would be set up to work perfectly and you would still not know you were missing the equipment at your facility. So doing at the sites.
00:14:20 Cormac O’Sullivan
Is really, really important and we really value that experience.
00:14:24 Nicole Weathers
I love that because I mean that allows the organization to, you know, see what's working and what's not and make active steps for improvement. And I think your point here of if you were in like a SIM room or, you know, a SIM center.
00:14:39 Nicole Weathers
Everything that you're going to have is there.
00:14:41 Nicole Weathers
Is there or everything that you're going to need is probably there and or it's different than what you're actually going to be using in the.
00:14:48 Nicole Weathers
Real the real situation.
00:14:50 Jacinda Bunch
Right. It might not be your brand of IV pump. And so now not only are you doing the simulation, but you're also struggling to learn a brand new.
00:14:58 Jacinda Bunch
Piece of equipment.
00:14:59 Jacinda Bunch
At the same time, which really takes away the learning from the simulation and from the debriefing because you're frustrated trying to learn new equipment because they don't have the same pump that you do. And like you said, loading up a van of nurses to take them to a SIM center is expensive. You have not only the cost of renting it out, you have their,
00:15:19 Jacinda Bunch
the employees time that are going, you have the backfill time for staffing.
00:15:25 Jacinda Bunch
And it's.
00:15:26 Jacinda Bunch
Not feasible to do on a large scale over a long period of time.
00:15:31 Nicole Weathers
And then you know, even if you do get the equipment and to just reiterate that when that person leaves, unless they are a lifer, they're gonna be there for the next 30 years or something, then what, right, you've got to.
00:15:44 Nicole Weathers
Have the right person to fill that role and be able to take over those same skills. So and the other point, and this is very true, is most of the time the educators.
00:15:54 Nicole Weathers
That we do have in rural facilities, it's not their only job, right? They are wearing multiple hats. And so this might just be a portion of what they need to do.
00:16:04 Nicole Weathers
For their role.
00:16:05 Nicole Weathers
And it's hard to even have the depth of skill that you need to facilitate some of these different activities. So.
00:16:13 Jacinda Bunch
As nurses, we tend to get education added on as oh, by the way, you're a really good clinical nurse. We're now going to make you the educator.
00:16:21 Jacinda Bunch
A lot of times, without really giving that person the education that they need in order to become a good educator. So it's just kind of you're good at one skill. So we're just gonna obviously assume that you can teach it as well. And sometimes we don't really support people to do that or have the opportunities to do that in some of those rural settings.
00:16:41 Nicole Weathers
So this last year, our residency program had the opportunity to collaborate with all of you and I personally think it's been very exciting to kind of see this partnership come to life. So maybe I mean, I know sort of my perspective on this, but I would love to hear what you guys think about some of these things.
00:17:00 Nicole Weathers
With this collaboration, so maybe you could.
00:17:02 Nicole Weathers
Talk now about.
00:17:03 Nicole Weathers
Why you decided to partner with us? Maybe what you're hoping that this collaboration achieves for both parties and then what maybe has surprised you about this collaboration so far?
00:17:23 Jacinda Bunch
Well, I think back and as being that we're both a part of the College of Nursing seeing. Kind of the different updates. Hey, the Nurse Residency program is doing this or hey, they're growing and they're doing these.
00:17:30 Jacinda Bunch
Things. And I remember watching a couple of those thinking you know what that would be really cool to work with them because you are out in a lot of the rural settings and that's really where a lot of our passion is. And just I we actually talked about it a couple of times like hey, we should talk or.
00:17:50 Jacinda Bunch
Hey, we should do something and it just kind of tipped us a little bit to get to the point that I think our program was kind of ready to take on that additionally because.
00:17:59 Jacinda Bunch
We were doing a lot of startup, a lot of.
00:18:01 Jacinda Bunch
Getting ready, moving our things around, moving it to EMS, moving into hospitals and we kind of hit this nice equilibrium. It was, I think the perfect time for us to explore working together again. It's just that the ability to help support those new graduates, I teach our nursing students right before they graduate.
00:18:22 Jacinda Bunch
So I have them for leadership and professional engagement. The last class before they graduate, and we talked a lot about leadership. We talked about followership, we talked.
00:18:31 Jacinda Bunch
About what are the skills you need to onboard into a new hospital.
00:18:35 Jacinda Bunch
How are you going to kind of integrate things? What is life going to look like as an adult now that you're leaving college and you actually have to manage all the things yourself and being that independent nurse for the first time?
00:18:49 Jacinda Bunch
And so I think it the partnership with us together kind of brings both of those things together for me, because I'm seeing the nurses go out and then this is also a way to support them in that first year that we know is so critical for a new nurse, I try to avoid telling nurses my horror stories from my first year first few months as a new graduate because they just look at me and they're like, I can't believe those things happen.
00:19:16 Jacinda Bunch
But we have nurse residency programs now, which are a wonderful asset to getting people onboarded and helping them feel supported and being able to add the skills and the simulations on to that as well. I think is just a perfect opportunity for us to be.
00:19:32 Jacinda Bunch
Together, I hope that we continue to grow it. I hope that this is something that is seen as valuable in the hospitals, both to the hospital administration who are looking at their new graduates and how they can best support them, but also that the new graduates, those new nurses now are feeling supported, that they are.
00:19:52 Jacinda Bunch
Able to practice some of those skills that maybe they didn't get a lot of hands on time in their program or now they're on a different unit than what they thought they were going to be on. And there's more skills they need to do, so giving them that opportunity, helping them figure out how they call the doctor and
00:20:11 Jacinda Bunch
When is it appropriate and how can I practice some of my communication and team pieces in my real setting now? Not in school, but as a nurse. How can I practice those things, identifying that my patient is in crisis now that I am the nurse and I'm the only one taking care of them? I just see it as an opportunity to support the hospital.
00:20:31 Jacinda Bunch
Support those new graduate nurses and hopefully improve patient care kind of across the board.
00:20:54 Nicole Weathers
And just to give a little bit of background for the listeners too, I'm because I'm sure you know, I assume that people know that this is happening, but you might be listening to this for the first time. So in the last year, our program, the Iowa Online Nurse Residency Program has teamed up with SIM-IA to pilot adding simulation into our residency program. So one of the things.
00:21:02 Nicole Weathers
That, you know, we do really good is working with new graduates, discussing their experiences. You know, the first time they had a rapid response or a situation where they had to call a provider, talking with them about what? What goes well, where are you struggling? How can we help you? Giving tips, strategies, all of those things.
00:21:21 Nicole Weathers
We always encouraged our organizations to add in their own clinical skills based on what the needs are of their own organization. It was just too much for us to meet everybody's needs that we work with.
00:21:35 Nicole Weathers
And even though that was something that we strongly encouraged, a lot of our partner sites to do, they would still come back to us and say, hey, we're still struggling here. We still need to get more hands-on clinical things into our residency program. How can you help? And so for our local hospitals, those in the state of Iowa.
00:21:55 Nicole Weathers
This was an idea that we had is could we leverage SIM-IA and the work that SIM-IA is doing to go out into these organizations, meet these nurses where they're at all of the things that we've already talked about as far as assets to these mobile simulation trucks.
00:22:12 Nicole Weathers
To really help support that new graduate and.
00:22:15 Nicole Weathers
So we're very.
00:22:16 Nicole Weathers
Early in the pilot, we've went out to three different organizations one time and ran Sims. We're in the process of planning session #2 right now with the SIM-IA team, but it has been really exciting, I think to see this collaboration.
00:22:31 Nicole Weathers
We all have a passion for supporting those out in rural communities. And so it's another way to kind of get that going.
00:22:42 Nicole Weathers
But then also really help these organizations that are struggling with some of the clinical skill development as well.
00:22:50 Nicole Weathers
So we've talked a lot.
00:22:52 Nicole Weathers
About rural and when people think of the University of Iowa, they don't always immediately think of rural right. But as we've learned, the whole sort of impetus for SIM-IA.
00:23:03 Nicole Weathers
To begin with, was really to support skill development in in rural areas. So why? Maybe I and maybe you guys don't know this or maybe you can speak to this.
00:23:12 Nicole Weathers
A little bit.
00:23:12 Nicole Weathers
About maybe why rural was the focus? Maybe for this, for the College of Nursing and.
00:23:20 Nicole Weathers
If there's any.
00:23:21 Nicole Weathers
Ways that you're like, approaching simulation differently because of it being out in rural hospitals and rural communities.
00:23:28 Cormac O’Sullivan
Yeah. So as I said, I run the Anesthesia nursing program and we produce CRNA’s. Iowa has, I think it's around 110 and 115 acute care hospitals and 88 of those are designated as rural critical access hospitals and the only anesthesia they have is a CRNA.
00:23:46 Cormac O’Sullivan
That allows the hospital to do procedures and generate revenue to keep the place open. The College of Nursing produces nurses that go all over the state, and so my students were going out to these rural facilities and they were asking for support for various things. And I have students that rotate to those facilities to get their clinical education.
00:24:07 Cormac O’Sullivan
Part of the program in Iowa is they have to do four months in rural critical access hospitals, anesthesia, to see what it's like out there.
00:24:13 Cormac O’Sullivan
And so that was a natural hook for me that we wanted to help improve continued education for the people out there.
00:24:21 Cormac O’Sullivan
Once we started getting involved in it and getting to some of these facilities, I will admit fully that I had no idea some of the smaller hospitals do not keep blood products on site, they just don't have because they can't afford that.
00:24:35 Cormac O’Sullivan
They may not have certain pieces of equipment that we just take second hand at Iowa and we have five of them. They don't have any of them.
00:24:42 Cormac O’Sullivan
And the provider, you know they're on call 24/7 for the entire week or two at time and they don't get to do anything. So all of the things that are rural, it's a very different environment than is at a major academic Medical Center. So we really had to start out with the focus of, almost a mini needs assessment or at least a questionnaire of,
00:25:01 Cormac O’Sullivan
What are your current practices? What kind of personnel? What kind of equipment do you have? Do you have this, this and this? And if they'd say no, we just take that out of the simulation.
00:25:10 Cormac O’Sullivan
Because it's just not possible to have it there. So you do need to adapt and we've said a couple of times about the high fidelity. What we really have found out is that it's not the fidelity, the mannequin that matters. It's getting the people into the situation, having them go through the steps of the crisis emergency or just assessment that you're working on.
00:25:31 Cormac O’Sullivan
And then discussing it and debriefing it well afterwards.
00:25:34 Cormac O’Sullivan
We do not need to have the high-fidelity mannequin for a lot of the simulations we run and then we can get a lot of education happening anyway. And as the team environment that is great and learning how different teams operate. There's one simulation we've been starting to run more frequently. It's an OB hemorrhage in a small hospital that has maybe lost OB care and the mom just shows up and has a baby and starts hemorrhaging.
00:25:59 Cormac O’Sullivan
And at one of the hospitals we ran this with some of my anesthesia folks, the secretary came in and helped out because that's who they had at that hour of the day. And they were responsible for certain cares. What we found out, though, is that, you know, we would run, say, the OB hemorrhage sim. Two or three months later, we might run a cardiac sim. Two or three months after that, we run an airway sim.
00:26:19 Cormac O’Sullivan
And it's not that they didn’t get better at the individual Sims, but the entire team function and knowing who to ask for help and when to
00:26:27 Cormac O’Sullivan
Call for help and how the steps would get done in a faster order improved no matter what the simulation was because they were more used to practicing critical situation. So that was a really cool thing to see and we had reports back from a couple of these rural facilities that you know, rural EMS had a visit with SIM-IA, where they ran a Peds seizure simulation, 2 weeks later they had a little baby seizing on them.
00:26:52 Cormac O’Sullivan
One of my other facilities we give the OB hemorrhage and within I think 3 days they had a mom hemorrhage at the facility. They knew exactly what to do because they had recently done that. Every year we run across the entire RAGBRAI route about two weeks before RAGBRAI happens. We're not providing care. What we're doing is we go into every single town RAGBRAI’s going through and we work with the EMS crews and the hospitals there
00:27:14 Cormac O’Sullivan
on likely injuries that are happening during RAGBRAI and they feel better prepared for it. So that's the focus of it and want and get out in rural Iowa because we both believe, and I know you do, truth that it doesn't matter where you live in Iowa, you should get high quality care because we've got the ability of the state. And we want to make sure everybody does.
00:27:34 Jacinda Bunch
Part of your second question, how do we approach simulation a little bit differently in rural hospitals, kind of speaks to the fact that we understand that rural is different. I grew up as a rural nurse for most of my career.
00:27:48 Jacinda Bunch
I was not a academic Medical Center nurse. We understand that those nurses have a special.
00:27:55 Jacinda Bunch
Set of skills that they have to multitask. You don't get to go necessarily into one unit and highly specialized in that unit and just be everything about that unit because you may be in that unit for a week and then you may have to rotate into the ED.
00:28:11 Jacinda Bunch
You may have to go pick up shifts in another area because.
00:28:16 Jacinda Bunch
Of coverage and vacations and people leaving. So we understand that rural nurses are often generalists. We're good at a lot of things.
00:28:27 Jacinda Bunch
But not highly specialized in those areas. So being aware being able to provide the multiple different training focus points that that they need, I think as we mentioned, we talked to them about what are your protocols, what are what are your expectations, what medications.
00:28:47 Jacinda Bunch
Are you using?
00:28:49 Jacinda Bunch
Because we want to meet them where they are and we want to make sure that we're really supporting them, not that we're trying to tell them to do something different in the simulation because that's the way we do it. But let's practice it the way that you were expected to do that in your setting. So that's a big piece of it is just understanding that generalist nature.
00:29:09 Jacinda Bunch
Understanding you know the multiple focal points and that things are a little different, you may have different equipment, you may not get kits that have everything preloaded for you. You may have to go pull each individual item that you need for a procedure or for an IV start or something like that.
00:29:28 Jacinda Bunch
Being consciously aware of those differences and actively looking for those when we've developed the simulations.
00:29:34 Nicole Weathers
So I am. I feel like, Jacinda, we have a lot in common. So I went to school at the University of Iowa, so I was very used to how things were at UIHC. My first job out of school as a new grad was in a larger urban hospital and then I found myself working in a rural hospital.
00:29:54 Nicole Weathers
About a year after that and I think it was my first day they were running mock codes and they the respiratory therapist was kind of the lead on this brought me into.
00:30:04 Nicole Weathers
The room was like, OK, you're walking to your patients room. You notice they don't have.
00:30:09 Nicole Weathers
A pulse, you know.
00:30:10 Nicole Weathers
What do you do? And I said, well, we're going to call the code team and start CPR. Right? And she laughed at me. And she goes, honey.
00:30:21 Nicole Weathers
You are the code team. Like there is nobody for you to call.
00:30:24 Nicole Weathers
Like you are the person that has to know how to do this. And I just remember being completely flabbergasted at that idea.
00:30:32 Nicole Weathers
Of the fact.
00:30:33 Nicole Weathers
That there wasn't anybody to call. And so for then many years it.
00:30:37 Nicole Weathers
Was, you know, you're working the night shift. It's you and maybe two other people in the whole hospital. And so when something does go South or there is a change in condition, something that requires you know what to do in this type of situation, we need them to be skilled, right? We need them to have that information and.
00:30:57 Nicole Weathers
The crew that you're working with is so much smaller, so knowing each other’s strengths and opportunities and being able to run through those types of situations together before they happen, I think can make all the difference.
00:31:10 Jacinda Bunch
Absolutely. So my first night shift out of school, I realized I was the only RN on the floor with two LPN's and that was my first night shift. I had no orientation to night shift. I was the first RN, only RN, 2 LPN's. I was waiting for an assignment. I quickly was told I had to make the assignments.
00:31:33 Jacinda Bunch
Six weeks out of school. Umm. And then I tried to be overly fair. The numbers were kind of lopsided, so I gave myself the extra ones because I wanted to, you know, be a team player. Then I found out that both of my the LPN's I was working with were not IV certified. So in addition to my patients, I had all of their IV's, their chemo, their antibiotics. Their IV fluids and it was a rough introduction to my first night shift as an RN.
00:32:18 Nicole Weathers
Absolutely, so a lot of our listeners are going to be residency coordinators, educators, hospital leaders who are really trying to support the skill development in these environments where certain procedures are rare. But critical. So what advice would you give an organization who's maybe struggling to maintain competency in these high risk, low volume skills? So maybe they're here in the state of Iowa? Maybe they're not. Do you have any small, tangible strategies you think would be helpful in these situations?
00:32:36 Cormac O’Sullivan
The simplest thing is that the leaders need to understand simulation works. This was very apparent with us when we were running a hemorrhage simulation and the blood bank was a distance from the area we needed the blood and we couldn't figure out how we're going to get it there. And sending a nursing student from where the hemorrhage was happening to the blood bank and back wasn't working. And management couldn't understand us. We had them come to the simulation.
00:33:03 Cormac O’Sullivan
They saw it and the patient actually died because we didn't get blood on time at which point they said. We are going to have someone from the blood bank get it over to you. They understood at that moment in time. So once they understand it works. Then they simply need to carve out and dedicate one day a month to simulation and put a schedule together. We know what causes bad outcomes.
00:33:25 Cormac O’Sullivan
There's closed claim studies done. They have all their own hospital data. The majority of kind of rare but critical things that happen are, you know, a code blue maybe.
00:33:34 Cormac O’Sullivan
An airway difficulty.
00:33:36 Cormac O’Sullivan
Maybe somebody's bleeding, and maybe there's some kind of the bad reaction to a medication. Those are the four. PEDs is another one you maybe you pick up one other one.
00:33:45 Cormac O’Sullivan
Some weird something you wanna do?
00:33:47 Cormac O’Sullivan
You get 12 months out of the year. January, you send out some education to people that didactically stuff. February you simulate on that March, you send out education, April, you simulate so every other month you're doing education simulation at a regular date and a regular time and it's just scheduled. It's part of the day.
00:34:06 Cormac O’Sullivan
It's like a meeting.
00:34:08 Cormac O’Sullivan
Like a surgical procedure. It's like a clinic appointment. It's scheduled. That always happens, and administration shows.
00:34:14 Cormac O’Sullivan
Up for it.
00:34:15 Cormac O’Sullivan
They're checking in. They're seeing how things.
00:34:16 Cormac O’Sullivan
Are.
00:34:17 Cormac O’Sullivan
Going people aren't allowed to blow it off, and it has to be.
00:34:20 Cormac O’Sullivan
Multi-disciplinary because if all the nurses know what to do, but they need a doc to put the central line in, or they need the ER doc to come in, or the practitioner to intubate, and they're on the run. They don't know what equipment is there? It's not going to work.
00:34:33 Cormac O’Sullivan
So you really need to get buy in from the top and the one person that you usually help out with this is a risk manager. They know that things have been causing problems at your institution.
00:34:43 Cormac O’Sullivan
And they can give you some insight into, we probably need to work on these skills. That's where you start getting, getting it going. Well, then we got to schedule it and make it an important, you know, metric for your facility. If you don't do that and you're the educator just trying to get people to do it, they aren’t going to do it after hours are coming early.
00:35:00 Cormac O’Sullivan
To do it.
00:35:00 Cormac O’Sullivan
They're not told, and if you can schedule it during the.
00:35:03 Cormac O’Sullivan
Middle of the.
00:35:03 Cormac O’Sullivan
Day. That's great because people are there already.
00:35:06 Jacinda Bunch
I would say kind of adding on to that, if you're a smaller institution and you know the full SIM center isn't something you can do or high fidelity mannequins, you don't have to have those, it's really nice and it makes it more realistic and actually, sometimes more fun for people to participate in.
00:35:27 Jacinda Bunch
But you can do things without high fidelity simulators. You can use your task trainers. You can use your IV start arms. You can use rolled up towels. You can simulate your patients. You can have one of your staff play to be the patient. Use cases that you've had.
00:35:47 Jacinda Bunch
So you can go back and if you're sitting there, well, I want to do a stroke. But how is this?
00:35:51 Jacinda Bunch
Actually going to.
00:35:52 Jacinda Bunch
Play out, go back and pull a case of a patient who developed this stroke while they were inpatient. Pull your vital signs.
00:35:59 Jacinda Bunch
Pull the backstory.
00:36:00 Jacinda Bunch
You can change it a little bit, but use the resources that you already have and I would also encourage you.
00:36:06 Jacinda Bunch
Similar to what Cormac said to walk through.
00:36:08 Jacinda Bunch
The actual steps.
00:36:10 Jacinda Bunch
Don't say. Well, I would go get the medication from the cart. Actually, make the person go and get the medication from the cart or I would call pharmacy and ask for X. Make them call pharmacy. Make them ask for it. Have pharmacy send it down. See what your timing is. See if there are barriers or they're locked doors. Do they actually have it? Is it expired?
00:36:31 Jacinda Bunch
Did they not order it because you weren't using it very much? All of those things, if you walk through those actual steps, you'll get to see places where there are gaps.
00:36:41 Jacinda Bunch
Or potentials to improve care and really listen to all of the team members. Get your NA's involved, get housekeeping involved. They're valuable when it comes to recognizing patients who are clinically deteriorating.
00:37:00 Jacinda Bunch
They often chat with them while they're cleaning the room or while they're getting baths, and they're going to notice things that even the nurse isn't going to notice as quickly because we have so many other things going on, another patient, so get them involved in the simulation, make them a part of it. Let them identify things. Let them practice.
00:37:19 Jacinda Bunch
Giving that information to the nurse, and how are they going to tell them that this patient isn't the same as they were yesterday when I talked to them? Something's different. Let them practice those things in.
00:37:31 Jacinda Bunch
real life because it's going to improve that teamwork is going to improve that, you know, respect between those different positions and just start slow and do something and then you can continually build on that as you go.
00:37:47 Cormac O’Sullivan
And then a shameless plug to add on, https://sim-ia.uiowa.edu/ that's our website.
00:37:56 Cormac O’Sullivan
Click on it and if you're in Iowa, we'll come out and sim with you.
00:38:00 Cormac O’Sullivan
If you're not, we're happy to share some advice. Contact us.
00:38:04 Nicole Weathers
Well, and I love that you're, you know, really emphasizing. Yes, high fidelity is great. And there's a lot of benefits obviously to using the high fidelity and having you guys come out. But even if that's not accessible to you because you're not in the state of Iowa or you know you want to provide this outside of when.
00:38:21 Nicole Weathers
You fabulous people can get there. You can use what you have and still have a really good educational opportunity with low fidelity options as well.
00:38:31 Nicole Weathers
OK, so going to pivot just a little bit here and talk now about a really exciting thing that we've both experienced here in the last couple months and that was being recognized as an Edge Runner by the American Academy of Nursing.
00:38:51 Nicole Weathers
So maybe you could talk a little bit about.
00:38:54 Nicole Weathers
A what an edge runner is and why this recognition matters, but also what you think this says about the SIM-IA program.
00:39:03 Cormac O’Sullivan
Sure. First of all, I want to clear up that Edge Runner does not mean I run anymore. I don't run, OK.
00:39:08 Cormac O’Sullivan
So, the American Academy of Nursing has this thing called Edge Runners, and it's for nurse design model care, which will lower cost and increase quality, advance equity and increased consumer or patient satisfaction. And I think it's absolutely staggering and amazing that the American Academy of Nursing decided to choose both.
00:39:28 Cormac O’Sullivan
The Iowa Online Nurse Residency Program and SIM-IA from the same college.
00:39:32 Cormac O’Sullivan
I think it's a real testament to A. the collaboration we're doing because you want to help rural care. We want to help rural care.
00:39:40 Cormac O’Sullivan
It was kind of a’ duh’ no brainer collaboration. When we finally realized what we could get accomplished together.
00:39:46 Cormac O’Sullivan
But the commitment to those underserved rural communities.
00:39:50 Cormac O’Sullivan
We know across the nation for financial reasons, rural communities are losing hospitals and healthcare providers. We know that like 20 different facilities in Iowa have stopped providing OB care in the last 10-15 years. And so the patients aren’t getting served and the what is the quote, how you get your care shouldn't be determined by where you live or
00:40:10 Cormac O’Sullivan
your zip code and it shouldn't be.
00:40:12 Cormac O’Sullivan
And in Iowa, we have a very interesting state in that we don't really have any major natural borders or problems like huge rivers to cross or mountain ranges or anything like that. We're wide and flat and square. We can get there. We got a couple of major interstates. So we can get there and deliver the care. Why shouldn't it be standardized and be super high quality?
00:40:33 Cormac O’Sullivan
You know, between the nurse residency program, you're helping with all the nurses. We're trying to help with the EMS, the providers and the nurses.
00:40:41 Cormac O’Sullivan
And simulation is a great way to educate people, so the fact that the American Academy of Nursing has recognized this is saying, wow, this is really a pretty good idea and will help change care. And we're absolutely going to increase equity. Our goal with SIM-
IA is no matter where you are, what corner of the state from the fact that.
00:41:01 Cormac O’Sullivan
The first Park Ranger finds you after you fell out of a tree. He gives you the right care. The local EMS people give you the right care. The local hospital gives you the right care when you get transferred to a larger facility and maybe even the University of Iowa Care. Every step along the way has been done according to the evidence, and it's been done well.
00:41:20 Cormac O’Sullivan
And that's really our goal. So we're extremely excited and it's you know, we have the resources here at the University of Iowa College of Nursing with our nurse residency and with, you know, all the work we're able to do, it's really our duty and our pleasure to share it with the rest of the state.
00:41:37 Cormac O’Sullivan
I'm ecstatic that the American Academy of Nursig has decided to recognize it as a pretty cool program, that some nurses put together.
00:41:43 Jacinda Bunch
And I think.
00:41:44 Jacinda Bunch
A piece of this too just reiterates or emphasizes that the University of Iowa College of Nursing is that they're supporting us to do these programs, that they are obviously, you know, giving us the administrative support, some a little bit of financial, you know, our time to help with the programs.
00:42:04 Jacinda Bunch
Really speaks to that they are concerned about rural Iowa. They are concerned about the entire state. We do want to see care improve. We want to support those rural healthcare providers, whether they're nursing, whether they're EMS.
00:42:20 Jacinda Bunch
Or if it's, you know, school nurses, long term care facilities, we are absolutely able and willing to go out and work with all of those different populations and a few more, athletic trainers, you know, few while we haven't said yet, but just the fact that recognizing that those needs are there.
00:42:39 Jacinda Bunch
And that we do have the capacity.
00:42:42 Jacinda Bunch
and the skills and the supplies and the equipment to be able to go out and help is really important and I think speaks a lot to the support that we have to do these programs.
00:42:55 Nicole Weathers
You know, there's a lot of organizastion that raises raise their hand and say we want to help these large hospitals, you know, do the work that they need to do.
00:43:03 Nicole Weathers
Not as many are raising their hand to say, hey, we want to help the smaller organizations do the work that they are trying to do. And so I just, I do think you know, after 12 years of running this program after five years of you guys doing your SIM-IA work.
00:43:17 Nicole Weathers
To be recognized as an Edge Runner, as somebody who is changing the landscape and it's a nurse led innovation. It's just really exciting and I think it really reinforces all the work that probably the two of you have poured into this program to make it go and
00:43:38 Nicole Weathers
How important that work has been because people are noticing that it is making a difference.
00:43:43 Cormac O’Sullivan
Well, kudos to you too. On the nurse residency and you know how many nurses that you have put through their residency in a small hospital have actually stayed there and kept that hospital open.
00:43:54 Cormac O’Sullivan
It's hard to staff us. I mean, you know, we’re at the academic Medical Center in Iowa City. It's hard to hire staff to come to Iowa for anywhere. You go out to the rural environments. Unless you were born and raised there, you may not want to go there. And even if they were, if they come here to go to school, they may not want to go back. But you've given them an avenue with the online nurse residency, and they're getting the same exact orientation into the profession that they are at the larger centers. So, I think we're both doing some pretty good stuff for the State of Iowa, and I'm proud of that.
00:44:23 Jacinda Bunch
Absolutely. And that's why the partnership between the two programs is so cool is because we do both programs do have that innovative mindset and.
00:44:32 Jacinda Bunch
And really that broad, how can we serve? How can we make things better? How can we go forward and then just the willingness to work together? So, I think it speaks to both programs that you know we are recognizing that and moving forward.
00:44:49 Nicole Weathers
I mean, just like you, it shouldn't matter where I am practicing as a nurse. I should have the tools and resources and knowledge to be successful in that. And so, whether that's the clinical skills that you're supporting, or some of those more professional skills that we're supporting. It really shouldn't matter where you're starting your practice or where you're choosing to practice.
00:45:09 Nicole Weathers
You should have access to that.
00:45:13 Nicole Weathers
OK. So, looking ahead now what's next for SIM-IA? Do you have anything coming up, collaborations, innovations, expansions that you'd like to share?
00:45:22 Jacinda Bunch
Actually, we do. So, we were very pleased to have a partnership support coming from the Wellmark Foundation. We just recently got to announce that we had we went out to Alburnett. We were able to have some training out there and with their volunteer EMS.
00:45:44 Jacinda Bunch
And we had announced this, this partnership, this funding that we're receiving from the Wellmark Foundation. And you know, you said that people are really eager to sometimes go and help those big communities and those big cities and things like that, the Wellmark Foundation actually saw our involvement in rural healthcare.
00:46:04 Jacinda Bunch
And realized that they wanted to be able to support that. So really recognized our focus on rural healthcare, recognized the impact that SIM-IA could potentially have. They went out and they talked to people about the program, about how this was impacting care, how this was supporting those healthcare professionals, and they chose to support us with some funding going forward for the next five years.
00:46:31 Jacinda Bunch
Because of this, we are able to keep SIM-IA on the road. We are able to provide some free training to critical access hospitals and community hospitals in rural areas, EMS in those rural areas as well. In addition, each of the maternal desert counties are going to get an OB simulation in our partnership with the Iowa Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative.
00:46:57 Jacinda Bunch
So they're going to get some additional OB services, OB training.
00:47:02 Jacinda Bunch
Just being able to recognize this moving forward and the again the financial support to keep this free for those rural communities is really important for us. We're always looking for funding support so that we can keep even more of it free. But to know that we have this program support is really huge for us moving forward.
00:47:21 Nicole Weathers
That is so exciting and what a blessing that they raised their hand and said we want to help with this. That's really awesome to hear. And I know that there are a lot of rural healthcare organizations that are going to be really excited about these upcoming opportunities.
00:47:45 Jacinda Bunch
Yeah.
00:47:46 Jacinda Bunch
Well, hopefully if you get a phone call, if you see an e-mail coming across and you're in Iowa, you're at a rural facility, don't pass it in the trash. It's probably us trying to give you some free training, some free simulation education. If you haven't heard from us yet, pick up the phone or.
00:48:03 Jacinda Bunch
Or get on our e-mail, find our website. We're happy to collaborate, but we will be reaching out to those rural communities, both hospitals and EMS in the next few months to try to start getting some things on the calendar as we move forward.
00:48:23 Nicole Weathers
Well, we will make sure that in the show notes to this episode that we link your website and that's where they can find more information. We'll include your contacts as well. So, if they have additional questions or anything they'd like to follow up on, they'll know where to find you.
00:48:35 Jacinda Bunch
That would be great.
00:48:36 Nicole Weathers
Alright. Well, we've talked about a lot of really great things today. You introduced us to SIM Iowa what it was, the collaboration that we have together with the online Nurse Residency program.
00:48:50 Nicole Weathers
We talked about the importance of this program out there in rural communities and even practical advice for leaders, educators, residency coordinators who maybe don't have access to you. What are some other things that they can do to bring simulation into the mix?
00:49:08 Nicole Weathers
And then we've talked about some of these more exciting things around the Edge Runner award and your new funding that's going to allow you to continue to provide this service for many years to come. So, before we go, I have one last question and I asked this question of every guest who comes on the podcast. But when it comes to supporting.
00:49:29 Nicole Weathers
Nurse skill development through simulation. What's one thing that you see organizations doing that you think makes a significant difference and you wish more organizations would do?
00:49:41 Cormac O’Sullivan
Yeah, I would say.
00:49:42 Cormac O’Sullivan
Making simulation for skill development a priority. Budget it. You know when you do that, you start seeing gains that are intangible, and you don't even realize were happening. When we do our OB hemorrhage simulations, we measure it with something called the Petra scale, which was developed to do that. And we just see gains across the scale.
00:50:02 Cormac O’Sullivan
I had a graduate student years ago that for his doctorate nursing practice project, did a simulation of a facility and when he was done in the facility, said hey, that was great.
00:50:13 Cormac O’Sullivan
Right. Could you do a couple more for us and they now have a regular scheduled simulations for the crises across the institution and they really dropped the number of bad outcomes they're having significantly.
00:50:27 Cormac O’Sullivan
Because everyone's ready for it. You know, there are so many things you don't figure out until you do a simulation. And then especially like I said earlier, administration gets involved in like, wow, why would we do that that way? We should have done that that way and they start seeing whatever he knows is a problem, but hasn't been highlighted yet.
00:50:47 Cormac O’Sullivan
And I think the simulations, it's interesting, you have to dedicate the time and the resources up front and you're never going to get a light bulb. Wow, we just saved $5,000,000 here, because the errors aren't going to happen. You wouldn't know that you were going to have an error three weeks from now, that was going to cause a big bad outcome. Somebody would die.
00:51:08 Cormac O’Sullivan
The family would be without that loved one, and there might be a large lawsuit against your facility, which would, could cause the facility to close. So, there's things like that that you have to understand that benefits the simulation and prioritize it in your institution.
00:51:21 Jacinda Bunch
I would tag on to that to say have the have the nursing leaders involved. I've seen such a big difference when nursing administration, nursing leaders show up.
00:51:33 Jacinda Bunch
Maybe to participate in the simulation, maybe they are making patient rounds and they're the one that finds the patient down. What are they going to do?
00:51:40 Jacinda Bunch
Give them a role, give them a job, even if it's observing. Even if it's, you know, making tick marks on how long it took for X, Y and Z. Get them involved. Not only does it increase the administrative support, as Cormac described, because they see things that they could change, and they see things that can improve.
00:52:02 Jacinda Bunch
The staff also see them being involved in it and they see that administration is making it important. Administration is putting it on their calendar. My nursing supervisor showed up for this. My nursing manager thinks this is important. All of these things just increase those relationships between staff and admin, staff and management.
00:52:27 Jacinda Bunch
And it and it, it just increases the value of simulation. It allows you to get the clinical skills, but also that relationship building, which is really important as well. So administration nurse leaders show up be there, watch, participate, engage. You'll see things to improve. But you'll also, your staff will also see you.
00:52:50 Cormac O’Sullivan
One last thing on that is that we the SIM-IA crew does simulations at like 8:00 at night with some services. They can't run all the simulations between 8:00 and 4:00 on the daytime, they're on night shift through our weekend shift. They should not be expected to come in on their off time to do these simulations. If others are getting them during the work week, run a simulation Saturday evening, run one at 2:00 AM in the middle of the night, because what happens at those hours is vastly different to what happens between 8:00 and 4:00.
00:53:18 Nicole Weathers
100% on that for sure.
00:53:22 Nicole Weathers
All right, you guys, this was a great conversation. I greatly appreciate your time today. I appreciate all the work that you're putting into this program and all the rural communities that you're serving through this work. So, thank you again for your willingness to come on the podcast and again, just really appreciate everything that you guys do.
00:53:46 Cormac O’Sullivan
Thank you. You too, Nicole. Great residency program. Go Hawks!
00:53:54 Nicole Weathers
Wait before you go, I want to make sure you know all about our suite of resources you can use to support your new graduate nurses. This includes our Academy, a coaching program designed for organizations as they prepare for the implementation, and ongoing sustainability of a nurse residency program.
00:54:13 Nicole Weathers
Work one-on-one with residency program experts to make sure your organization is residency ready.
00:54:19 Nicole Weathers
Our clinician well-being course is an asynchronous online course that aims to enhance the well-being and resiliency of healthcare professionals, equipping them with the necessary psychological capital to navigate challenges inside and outside of work. Supporting nurses is another asynchronous online course for preceptors mentors and coaches to learn the skills they need to support any new hire.
00:54:43 Nicole Weathers
Both of these offerings can be used as a standalone professional development opportunity or to augment any nurse residency program. And we can't forget about the program that started it all. The Online Nurse Residency Program. This includes a comprehensive curriculum designed to support new graduate nurses, applying all the knowledge they learned in school to their practice.
00:55:03 Nicole Weathers
We focus on professional skills, personal well-being competencies, and new graduate nurses even get the opportunity to create real change in their own organization.
00:55:14 Nicole Weathers
Offered completely online and in a blended format, this program is highly adaptable to all clinical practice settings. You can learn more about all of these programs and more of what we offer using the links in the show notes below.