Patient with Total Hip Replacement: Bedside Simulation and its Implications for Collaborative Practice and Improved Patient Safety

Patient with Total Hip Replacement: Bedside Simulation and its Implications for Collaborative Practice and Improved Patient Safety

Purpose – To share an experience that provides students with an authentic opportunity to perform, collaborate and learn roles and responsibilities during a simulated bedside experience with medical imaging (MI), nursing and physical therapy (PT) students.

Background – Collaborative “practice ready” graduates are essential to the concept of patient-centered care and are dependent on the shared knowledge of one’s individual skills as well as the common skills within the team structure. This preparation cannot occur without the emphasis on roles and responsibilities, collaborative communication, and improved teamwork.

Many interprofessional education (IPE) programs provide collaborative experiences between nursing and PT students, but opportunity for MI is not always present. This experience offers a unique model to allow integration of imaging as an important component of the team.

Description – Collaborative student teams attended to a simulated patient at the bedside in a nursing lab. Students were provided with a patient chart. Nursing students initiated the introduction and evaluation, physical therapy students performed the pre-transfer assessments, and medical imaging students performed simulated post-operative x-rays. Each was charged with ensuring communication, teamwork and patient safety.

Results – Qualitative feedback was positive. Common themes evolved around improved knowledge of the roles of others, similarities in assessment needs, and the importance of communication. A common thread was the role that communication and teamwork play in patient safety when positioning and mobilizing a patient with post-surgical precautions, the use of imaging to aid in diagnostic decision making, and the need to keep the patient at the center of collaborative care.

Conclusion – This simulation offered students the opportunity to improve on the collaborative effort of nursing, PT and MI that is often part of the patient experience s/p a total hip arthroplasty.

Relevance – Integration of multiple professions in simulated experiences broadens the discussion and highlights the commonalities of patient-centered care.

Objectives

1. Recognize opportunities and value to engage medical imaging, nursing and physical therapy students in a collaborative learning experience.
2. Describe approaches for integrating different health professional students with the focus on communication and information sharing for patient safety initiatives.
3. Describe an innovative interprofessional simulation activity with attention to cooperative clinical partnerships.