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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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U N I V E R S I T Y O F P I T T S B U R G H |
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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The Virtual Hospital: A Business Simulation Model
The 2007 ACIE grant award for Gail Wolf’s The Virtual Hospital: A Business Simulation Model for Nursing Leaders will help nursing students in leadership roles learn how to balance the administrative and clinical needs of today’s healthcare environment. Traditionally, there has been a clinical focus in the curriculum of nursing students. Many of these students who move into administrative roles as executives and managers do not possess the business and financial background they need for the complex problem solving that confronts them on the job. Many nursing leaders return to school and take business courses, but there is often a disconnect between what they learn in these classes and how they can apply this knowledge to their profession.
Wolf’s firsthand experience as professor and director of the Nursing Leadership Program in the School of Nursing and 30 years of senior leadership roles within the healthcare profession inspired her to develop The Virtual Hospital . This Web-based learning tool, which graduate-level nursing students will access through Blackboard, allows them to test the results of various decisions outside the actual work setting. The Virtual Hospital will include actual financial and quality data from a 300-bed community hospital. It will simulate areas of a real hospital, including finance and quality departments, human resources, nursing units, operating rooms, and an emergency room. Students will be given case studies, and asked to solve problems using data found in The Virtual Hospital . Once they have solved a problem, they will share their findings with other students in class. This process allows students to learn and evaluate multiple solutions in a simulated setting without subjecting patients and/or organizations to actual risk. This new hands-on learning tool will replace the traditional classroom approach in the hopes of giving students practical training that will translate directly to their needs as nursing professionals. Wolf claims to have an “almost embarrassing passion for nursing” and believes that nurses are the essence of the healthcare profession. Her hope is that this new educational tool will enable nursing leaders to communicate their ideas more clearly to upper-level management and help them to be better leaders by providing assignments that mimic “real-life” problems confronting healthcare leaders today and test their decision-making skills. The Virtual Hospital has the support of 14 faculty within the School of Nursing with the potential application to 11 courses that could eventually affect 60-75 graduate and 200 undergraduate students. Faculty in other disciplines have expressed interest in this self-sustaining educational tool, and since it will be housed in Blackboard, it could be used for a variety of educational applications.
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A newsletter devoted to the support of teaching and learning at the University of Pittsburgh |
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