The-Laker-Issue-Fall-2021

Heather’s instructors gave lectures using overhead projectors, and the lab was a room of beds separated by curtains where students practiced carrying out doctors’ orders. It would be a few more years before the curriculum included physical assessments such as listening to patients’ heart and lung sounds, asking about their pain level and checking the condition of their skin. In the 1980s, people spent more time in the hospital recovering from routine procedures, Heather noted. Now, they may stay just a day while hospitals fill with more critically ill and injured patients whose conditions change between the doctors’ rounds. “As nurses, we do make more decisions in the moment than we used to,” she added. Nursing programs have put greater weight on simulations in the last half dozen years. In a simulation, an instructor uses a tablet to program a manikin to register certain symptoms, such as a fever or a change in blood pressure. It tests students’ ability to identify a problem and counter it. Simulations also provide practice in handling IV’s, needles and other equipment; that dexterity may be critical in saving a patient someday. “It allows early intervention and gives students familiarity with several common situations they may run into,” Heather said. “If they make a mistake, that’s something they won’t forget, and the patient is never harmed in the simulation.” Simulations prepare students for their clinical assignments in local hospitals, where students like Ashley LeShure ’21 often have to hit the ground running. In 2018, she began her first clinical assignment at Geneva General Hospital. “It was my first day of clinical…my first patient of the day. The night nurse gave me a report, said he was fine, had a wonderful night, didn’t have any issues. Then I went to get the vital cart machine, and he was not OK. All of sudden the telemetry unit started beeping, and we went running in. And I did CPR on this guy, and we brought him back. First day of clinical, fresh out of the gate,” she said. Ashley had expressed doubts about her ability to complete the program, but her professor, Lisa McAnn, helped her view the incident as a defining moment. “Lisa was like, ‘Wow, if that was anyone else, they totally would have run in the other direction.’ And she said, ‘Although you may not feel like you’re meant to do this, I feel like you’re meant to do this. You always talked about saving somebody. You just saved somebody.’” The FLCC nursing program has steadily evolved with the profession, from an emphasis on lecture to expanded simulation training, but 2021 marks a watershed moment for the program. The College has embarked on a transformation of what students learn and how they learn it. In June, FLCC broke ground on a $7.2 million project to renovate and expand the nursing wing at the main campus in Canandaigua. The Sands Family Center for Allied Health, named for the Sands Family Foundation, which contributed $3 million toward its construction, will open in stages over the next year. Plans include a closed simulation room where students will have to work independently to make sense of symptoms that simulation manikins present. Faculty are preparing for a revised curriculum in fall 2022 to enhance students’ critical thinking and ability to apply classroom theoretical knowledge in a safe environment. Teaching students how to sort through all they learn is particularly important, said Mary Coriale, who retired in 2020 as professor and nursing department chair. “The increase in the knowledge base that our graduates need to have to function in the workplace has just grown exponentially over the last 25 years,” she said. Demands of the program Professor Heather Reece-Tillack ’83, the current chair of nursing, has experienced the program first as a student in the early 1980s, then as a faculty member for the last 30 years. “It was definitely a tough, tough program. The expectations were high,” she said though the emphasis has changed. the LAKER | 5 Danielle Meek of Hemlock, foreground, operates an IV pump while Lway Soe of Rochester assesses lung sounds produced by computer in a manikin during a nursing simulation with adjunct faculty member Maribel Acosta, a nurse educator at Strong Memorial Hospital. Simulations help the students develop critical thinking and apply classroom theoretical knowledge in a safe environment. photo by rikki van camp Ivan Castillo-Serrano ’20, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Mexico, stopped working while attending FLCC’s nursing program to improve his English and learn course materials at the same time. See pages 8-9 for his story. photo by jan regan