Tag Archives: nursing

Two nursing education research projects developed by the Institute for Interactive Arts and Engineering (IIAE) at UT Dallas in collaboration with the UT Arlington College of Nursing have received national and state recognition this spring.

One project — “Can Game Play Teach Student Nurses How to Save Lives?” — has been named a 2012 Computerworld Honors Laureate. This game-based simulation uses 3D infant patients in a synthetic environment to give undergraduate nursing students virtual clinical

One project — “Can Game Play Teach Student Nurses How to Save Lives?” — has been named a 2012 Computerworld Honors Laureate.  This game-based simulation uses 3D infant patients in a synthetic environment to give undergraduate nursing students virtual clinical practice opportunities.  The project was funded through a UT System Transforming Undergraduate Education grant. It will be recognized for its applications of information technology to promote positive social, economic and educational change at the Computerworld Laureate Medal Ceremony and Gala Evening on June 4 in Washington, D.C.

A second research project, NursingAP.com, tied for first place as Best Demonstration Project at the “Innovations in Health Science Education” conference sponsored by the University of Texas Academy of Health Science Education. The recognition is voted on by attendees at the conference, which is sponsored by the six health science campuses within the UT System.

A project called “Can Game Play Teach Student Nurses How to Save Lives?" uses 3D infant patients in a synthetic environment.

NursingAP.com is a blended-learning website that incorporates interactive technology and virtual environments to assist graduate students seeking nurse practitioner degrees and certifications. The project started with neonatal nurse practitioner (NNP) curriculum.   The project is funded by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

NursingAP.com affords students opportunities to practice the knowledge acquired through lecture material through the use of interactive modules and a 3D virtual Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The components of the NNP curriculum are presented through lecture notes with embedded media, and a variety of other multimedia forms, including videos, interactive games, simulations and virtual equipment demonstrations.  Students can practice clinical skills in the virtual NICU, an immersive environment where 3D patients present medical conditions covered in lecture content.

The project gives undergraduate nursing students virtual clinical practice opportunities.

Both projects are research collaborations between Dr. Marjorie A. Zielke, in Arts and Technology assistant professor and the associate director of IIAE, and Dr. Judy LeFlore, professor at the UT Arlington College of Nursing.  “These continual awards reinforce the deep talent of our student developers,” Dr. Zielke said.  “I also think we need to give a great deal of credit to our strong collaboration with the UT Arlington College of Nursing.”

“I am particularly proud of the scope of the recognition we are receiving from international conferences to internal recognition by the UT System Health Science campuses,” Dr. Zielke continued.

At the Computerworld awards dinner, the UT System project will be presented with a medallion inscribed with the program’s mission statement, “A Search for New Heroes.”

“The Computerworld Honors program was especially competitive this year, as more than 500 IT initiatives were nominated for their innovation and benefit to society,” said Julia King, executive editor of events for Computerworld.

These new honors are just two of the several awards received by IIAE projects over the past two years.  The UT System project also received a first place award for Emerging and Innovative Technology and Methods at the 2011 International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH). The simulation was used in a randomized, controlled study designed to compare the clinical application of undergraduate nursing students using a virtual clinical experience compared to students receiving the same pediatric respiratory content in traditional lecture format. Results of the study were published this spring in Simulation in Healthcare, the journal of the Society of Simulation in Healthcare.  Another project, The First Person Cultural Trainer (FPCT) won first place in the government category of the Serious Games Showcase at the Interservice/Interindustry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando in December 2011.  Earlier in 2011, FPCT earned first-place in the Innovations in DoD Gaming Competition at the 2011 Defense GameTech Users’ Conference also in Orlando.

Researchers from UT Dallas and the UT Arlington College of Nursing have created a virtual environment where graduate students can train online for the medical challenges that await them in the real world.

NursingAP.com is designed to help Advanced Practice Nursing students hone critical skills interactively, on their own schedules via distance learning.

Dr. Marjorie Zielke

“Medical simulation offers the potential to be critical technology for many reasons,” says Dr. Marjorie Zielke, assistant professor of Arts and Technology (ATEC) at UT Dallas and principal investigator for the site’s technology design.  “We can train nurses more quickly, leverage doctoral-level faculty, train on rare but potentially fatal conditions and ultimately save lives. It allows nursing students from remote locations to practice in a controlled, reduced-risk, cost-effective environment.”

Researchers believe this emerging field of virtual gaming medical simulation can improve the accuracy and speed of cognitive and behavioral skills, better preparing nursing students for real-life situations.

A medical care environment complete with virtual babies and nurses helps students prepare for critical situations.

“We have seen some promising results from a randomized study we conducted in the spring of this year,” said Dr. Judy LeFlore, associate professor of nursing at UT Arlington and principal investigator for the project. “Game students (in an experimental group) were more likely to select the right intervention and do it in a more timely manner compared to the lecture only group (control group). However, more research is needed to assure cognitive, behavioral, and/or psychomotor knowledge obtained in the virtual world can successfully be translated into the physical world.”

NursingAP.com is funded by a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and serves as both a supplement to traditional classroom instruction and a potential resource for the ongoing education of working professionals in the future.

LeFlore and Zielke submitted a research abstract about their project, titled, “Can Game Play Teach Student Nurses How To Save Lives: An Undergraduate Training Proposal for Student Nurses in Pediatric Respiratory Diseases with a Living World Gaming Construct,” to the 11^th International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH), and placed first in the topic category of Emerging and Innovative Technologies & Methods.

Information screens on the NursingAP.com site guide students with both pictures and text.

The initial phase of NursingAP.com is focused on Neonatal Nurse Practitioner training, with subject matter covering conditions in newborns and babies under 2 years old. The training consists of three components:

• Lectures by subject matter experts like LeFlore, which lend a human intelligence component and provide guidance and content.
• Complex interactives, such as the virtual ventilator, which allow for specific training exercises and familiarity with equipment.
• The immersive game itself, “Virtual NICU,” in which the interactive equipment appears in context, allowing nursing students to feel they are actually practicing on a patient in a virtual hospital setting.

In the game, students make decisions within their scope of responsibility on a variety of neonatal conditions.   The virtual environment allows for endless practice and a variety of scenarios in a risk-free environment that can be altered to create dilemmas that can’t be found in a textbook. The student can “feel” tired or stressed, or might have to deal with the virtual patient’s family – all real-life situations that a nurse would have to handle. Such an emphasis on psychological, behavioral and social modeling is unique, providing a distinctive teaching modality that may be used in conjunction with physical simulation, says LeFlore.

But Zielke makes it clear that simulation and virtual patients should not substitute for  traditional lectures and practicum – they simply provide another avenue of learning. She says, “I received my PhD at age 52. So I came in with much more industry experience than 20-something students who got their degrees straight out of college. I might gain more knowledge from the interactive game than from the lectures, simply because of what I already knew coming in.”

That’s one of the unique characteristics of the site – students can enter the program from different navigations, experience levels and perspectives, but will still gain the pertinent knowledge and skills they need. A system of learning metrics and usage patterns are in place to help aggregately track students’ progress and show professors how they are using the materials. The instructors are able to gauge the effectiveness of a variety of different learning modules, to determine what works best for each student.

NursingAP.com provides more than 60 lectures accompanied by dynamic learning modules designed to appeal to various learning styles. All lecture content and interactive courseware meets the core requirements defined by the National Certification Corporation and the National Association of Neonatal Nurses. Researchers are hopeful that the neonatal platform will be applied to other medical issues in the future.

Assistant Professor Marjorie Zielke has been awarded a three-year, $350,000 grant to create online training in neonatal nursing through an ongoing collaboration with the UT Arlington School of Nursing (UTASON).

“Student learning will be enriched by faculty perspectives from across the country,” Marjorie Zielke said of her project.

Zielke, with Arts and Technology (ATEC) faculty members Monica Evans, Frank Dufour and Todd Fechter, will build a Web site that allows student nurses to be taught concurrently by faculty from Dartmouth University, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the University of Texas at Arlington and Stony Brook University School of Nursing in New York.  The new research enhances subject matter review and creates a more portable learning experience.

“Student learning will be enriched by faculty perspectives from across the country,” said Zielke. “Students also will benefit from the social community of other graduate-level nursing students through this virtual learning environment.”

The course subject matter covers conditions in fetuses and babies under 2 years old.  Students can download a lecture as a podcast or video, and then follow up with a virtual examination of an infant in a no-risk environment. The virtual environment allows for endless practice and limitless scenarios in a risk-free environment. For instance, the instructor can program symptoms such as respiratory distress into a 3D model, rather than teach based on the conditions of patients visiting a clinic or hospital on a given day.

ATEC students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels also will participate in this project, performing research, modeling, animation, story development and computer programming.

Research project sponsors are the UTASON, with principal investigator Dr. Judy Leflore, and the Health Resources and Services Administration.

Professor Zielke is thinking beyond the virtual classroom. In addition to her work on grants from The University of Texas System and other healthcare organizations, she plans to create a virtual baby, which is difficult because of the current technology used to capture motion. A researcher cannot, for instance, direct an infant to raise its right arm so that the cameras and computers can capture every nuance of the movement as a basis for animation.

“We like to take on complex projects that no one really knows how to do,” she said. “I’ve always been interested in being able to represent humans virtually, both physically and cognitively. Representing non-verbal communication is especially challenging.  This line of research has the potential to make a major difference in the way online medical education and medical simulations are done today.”