The Centre for Advanced Patient Care Simulation opened in 2005 with an investment of nearly $1 million in the facility, equipment, curriculum and faculty education. The Centre expanded in 2011, with $300,000 in infrastructure upgrades courtesy of Alberta Advanced Education and Technology, to enhance the existing facilities with additional clinical space and a viewing hallway for observing simulation exercises. The expanded lab was also resourced with $100,000 in new equipment.
The lab realistically re-creates a clinical environment and a fully functional treatment area within the back of an ambulance. The Centre is stocked with sophisticated and realistic patient simulation manikins that can mimic human physiological parameters such as breathing, pulses, blinking, speaking. Students interact with the manikins as they would real patients, assessing, making treatment decisions, and then applying treatment and observing responses, all within a typical health care team setting.
The philosophy of the Centre is to provide students with a realistic environment in which they can safely make mistakes and learn from them, better preparing them for experience in the real world. Students are challenged with difficult patient care problems that can be recreated again and again until confidence and competence is achieved. Students typically find the simulation environment one of the most challenging and enjoyable parts of their learning at SAIT.
Each year, SAIT Polytechnic’s Centre for Advanced Patient Care Simulation hosts SimuNation - a Patient Simulation Educational Experience.
Patient Simulation is an educational tool involving realistic clinical settings and manikins that can mimic breathing, blinking, speaking and the vital signs of humans in sickness and in health. The use of Patient Simulation in Alberta and Western Canada is growing, as a variety of health care fields turn to Simulation to enhance students’ knowledge and allow them to more quickly achieve competence in caring for the sick and injured.
The Centre for Advanced Patient Care Simulation (CAPCS) initiated SimuNation in 2009 to provide a networking and educational opportunity for the growing community of Patient Simulation Educators in Western Canada. SimuNation 2009 and 2010 brought together multi-disciplinary groups of health care providers with the common goal of providing excellence in patient simulation learning.
Details on SimuNation 2011 will come early in the new year, with another great group of presentations and presenters, along with hands-on workshops in the Patient Simulation Lab.
Explore the Centre for Advanced Patient Care Simulation with the following three virtual tours - check out the back of our built-in ambulance, the "living room" area used to simulate real-life emergencies for the EMT and EMT-Paramedic programs, and the "clinical" area used primarily by Respiratory Therapy students.
Use mouse to scroll around in image, "Shift" key to zoom in, "Ctrl" key to zoom out.
Use mouse to scroll around in image, "Shift" key to zoom in, "Ctrl" key to zoom out.
Use mouse to scroll around in image, "Shift" key to zoom in, "Ctrl" key to zoom out.
