Using Virtual Simulation to Humanize Online Learning

A major challenge for online professional programs is providing students with hands-on, practical training from a distance.  For example, graduates of online nursing programs will need to be able to think clearly and make quick decisions in critical situations, but it is difficult to replicate these types of situations in the online environment.  This session explores how the developers of an online Failure to Rescue course at the Ohio State University have addressed this challenge by leveraging a variety of techniques to create a humanizing and real-world experience for students.

 “Failure to Rescue” refers to circumstances where a patient dies as a result of a condition that would be treatable as long as the medical team recognizes signs of patient deterioration in a timely enough manner to intervene and save the patient’s life.  Thus, the core of Failure to Rescue course content is geared toward helping students recognize the often subtle signs of patient distress and teaching them the appropriate interventions to take or anticipate when they observe specific symptoms or combinations of symptoms.

At the Ohio State University, students enrolled in face to face sections of the Failure to Rescue course complete a series of patient simulations in a state-of-the-art medical simulation laboratory.  In these simulations, students are presented with a manikin patient in a mock hospital room containing the same monitors and equipment they could expect in a standard hospital setting.  They are provided with a verbal description of the patient’s condition and they then interact with the manikin as they would with a normal hospital patient while nursing faculty manipulate the patient’s vital signs (according to a pre-planned script) in response to the various interventions the nursing students attempt.  Clearly, this provides a valuable opportunity for these face to face students to apply the knowledge they gain through the Failure to Rescue course in a realistic and dynamic environment…but how could this type of hands-on practice be replicated in the online environment?  

This was our challenge in early 2017 as we embarked on the development of the online version of the Failure to Rescue course.  To meet this challenge, we adopted a variety of simulation strategies ranging in complexity from simple text scenarios for students to work through to a web-based simulation tool produced by a company called Virtual Education Systems (VES), which provides students with a description of a patient’s condition and then places them in a hospital room where they have the opportunity to ask many of the same questions, measure the same vital signs, and perform the same interventions virtually that they would in an in-person simulation.  Despite this diversity of strategies, a common thread through the entire course was to incorporate digital storytelling techniques to maximize students’ sense of connection to the fictional patients and stake in the proper management of their care.

In this session, we will present our experience with weaving together this array of approaches to patient simulation and the somewhat surprising student response.  In doing so, we hope to contribute to a larger discussion in instructional design about the possibilities available for providing online students with the humanizing, real-world experience they need to prepare for their future careers.  Audience members will participate in demonstrations of some of our course activities, including the VES web-based simulation tool; learn about the opportunities and challenges of working with a vendor that is new to higher education; and engage in an interactive discussion that will address the enduring question of just how fancy online learning strategies need to be to get the job done.  Session slides will be provided.