If you haven't started nursing school yet, or haven't heard of Sim lab, it's short for Simulation Laboratory. It's basically a big room or series of rooms set up to look like a hospital (or clinic, whatever your school does). It has a central area with one-way glass, where some instructors sit. They control the super duper high tech mannequins (Sim men) that are in the hospital beds. The Sim men have programmable temperatures, respirations, heartbeats, everything. There are microphones and speakers in them, and the instructors behind the glass can interact with you through the Sim man.
Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
Oh, except for the part where six or seven instructors are scrutinizing you.
This is a pic I found of a Sim person.
This is exactly what mine looked like, except my Sim man was actually a man. The instructor made him incontinent, which wasn't really a big deal, except they put a melted Snickers bar in his depends and then made fart sounds through the microphone while I cleaned and changed him. At the time, I was thinking WTF?! But even I have to admit, it's pretty funny. Instructors 1, Students 0.
I guess this is the year for big changes in my school's program... They got rid of the Fundamentals and Med-Surg 1 teachers at the end of last semester, so our Fundamentals teacher is new to the program as well as new to us. I heard that the HESI scores and overall performance for the block 1 and 2 (first two semesters) wasn't up to par, so they retooled it for my cohort. The result is that we are 3 weeks into the semester, have already written our first care plan, and actually did well on our first Sim lab. I've heard that the prior cohorts didn't even get introduced to care plans until halfway through the first semester, and didn't get a Sim lab until then as well.
What this means, only time will tell. But the early indications are that our instructors really knew what they were doing, and we are on the right track for success because of it.
Also in 8 weeks, my rehab clinical rotation starts.. First one with real people and not Sim men! One small caveat is that the facility I am assigned to is kind of a SuperFacility here... They are one of the larger networks and a lot of people want to work for them. I have an online orientation that is ridiculously long, as well as the in-person orientation. My hubby's friend's wife is an RN but they hired her on as an LPN making LPN pay (she held both an RN and LPN license)... What bothers me about that, isn't she held to the care standard of her highest license? Like if something went wrong, she would be negligent if she didn't act as an RN. So it seems to me that the facility is taking advantage of her skills by paying her at a lower rate for LPN work, but knowing that she has to pitch in if they understaff the unit and the crap really hits the fan.
The more I think about it, I realize I don't want to be involved with a company that makes that its practice. I may be the only person in this rotation not interested in working for this SuperFacility. No thanks, I'll gladly go work for County.
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