Author: Tara Heagele, MSN Ed., RN, PCCN
Institution: Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton
Coauthors: Elizabeth Mizerek, MSN, RN, CEN, FN-CSA, EMT-B
At the completion of this simulation clinical, students will:
- Describe the nurse’s role, how the nurse can protect the
safety of himself/herself and the patients, and the role of the
healthcare facility during a disaster.
- Successfully triage victims of a mass casualty event as evidenced by correct triage tag designations.
- Successfully perform a rapid trauma assessment on two
victims, as evidenced by observing the students follow the Trauma Nurse
Core Curriculum ABCDEFGHI method of rapid trauma assessment.
- Apply, administer and perform all necessary nursing interventions to the simulation manikins with traumatic injuries.
- Recognize the patient or designee as the source of control
and full partner in providing compassionate and coordinated care based
on respect for patient’s preferences, values and needs.
- Function effectively within nursing and inter-professional
teams, fostering open communication, mutual respect, and shared
decision-making to achieve quality patient care.
- Integrate best current evidence with clinical expertise and
patient/family preferences and values for delivery of optimal health
- Use data to monitor the outcomes of care processes and use
improvement methods to design and test changes to continuously improve
the quality and safety of health care systems.
- Use information and technology to communicate, manage knowledge, mitigate error, and support decision making.
Educator will assign 2-4 students to triage 15 patients. Discuss
each patient scenario with the class and decide if each patient was
triaged appropriately. Transition the clinical group to the Emergency Department. The student nurses will assume the care of Patient 9 and Patient 11.
This simulation clinical was used five times between February 2012
and September 2012 with last semester nursing students in an ADN
program. Pre and post conference discussion questions (provided in the
materials) resulted in a lengthy discussion about the nurse’s role in a
mass casualty incident during each simulation clinical day. Motivation
to participate in disaster drills and emergency preparedness was a
recurrent theme during the discussion.