The Herkimer-Fulton-Hamilton-Otsego BOCES Adult Practical Nursing Program’s simulation lab seems to students like it truly comes to life.
The mannequins in the lab have backstories including health and medical information, real equipment is used, and the teachers act out various character roles.
“You kind of feel like you’re really working in the situation,” student Crystal Spisak said. “I feel like I’m actually in the moment where I’m in with the patients and taking care of them.”
The simulation lab – commonly referred to as the “sim lab” – is one of the highlights of the Herkimer BOCES Adult Practical Nursing Program, and it will be featured during the program’s Open House for interested local adults. The Open House takes place from 6-8 p.m. on Tuesday, March 18, at the Herkimer BOCES Gateway Center on the second floor of the Arc Herkimer building at 420 E. German St. in Herkimer.
The program is currently recruiting students for the next licensed practical nursing classes. Those interested in joining the program should contact Stacie Shedd at 315-867-2209 or sshedd@herkimer-boces.org as soon as possible to get their entrance exam scheduled. Students must complete their entrance exam by May 16, 2025.
Another way to get started with the application process is to complete a short interest form at www.herkimer-boces.org/forms/lpn. Find more information about the program at www.herkimer-boces.org/lpn.
‘Back-to-basics nursing’
Herkimer BOCES Adult Practical Nursing Program Coordinator Marcia Thomas-Bruce said students in the sim lab get an overall, rounded experience to prepare them to be a nurse on the floor.
“They do basic nursing skills: interacting with their patients, finding out their patient needs, they do the med pass, they do anything in acute nursing,” Thomas-Bruce said. “So they practice their skills. They practice injections and things like that, that make them ready for clinical, ready for the real world.”
Instructor Erin Brien leads the sim lab experience for students with a goal of helping them work through mistakes and adjustments before working in the field. Teaching assistant Stacie Shedd plays a big role in the operation of the sim lab as well, and Thomas-Bruce works with students on the medication portion of the lab.
“We’re putting them through an actual clinical experience,” Brien said. “They’re doing full care on one patient or two patients, and we’re looking at back-to-basics nursing.”
Students figure out what they can do themselves, and when they should contact a doctor. They’re also learning to communicate with each other because the nurse directly caring for the patient must work closely with the med nurse, Brien said.
“Can they prioritize? Can they multi-task? Can they think critically when a situation changes?” Brien said. “Do they know what to do? We try not to tell them the answer. We try to keep asking open-ended questions like, ‘All right, can you do this? What are your options? Work your way through.’”
‘Learned the most’
Brien has found that the experience can be challenging for students but that it is very effective.
“I think learning happens best through struggling,” Brien said. “Once they make a mistake – we let it go a long time, and hopefully they pick up on what’s going on – but once they realize what’s happened, they’ll never do it again. Anybody who has gone through it will say it was the worst experience of my life, but I learned the most from it.”
Full-time student Iriele Chery, of Utica, said the sim lab prepares you and gets you ready.
“I love the sim lab,” Chery said. “It’s very stressful, but after the third day, you’ll start feeling better, but it definitely keeps you on your Ps and Qs and definitely gets you prepared for the real world. I kind of am grateful and happy that I actually got the sim lab first, so that way I know what to expect to know that I’m better for when I actually do it on a real patient.”
Spisak, of Herkimer, is in the part-time day program, and she also appreciates the pressure that the sim lab puts on students.
“They actually have oxygen hookups, so you have to give your patients oxygen and IVs,” Spisak said. “You’re taking their pulse, and you’re passing meds. Everything is set up like it would be in an actual patient’s room.”
The experience is definitely beneficial, Spisak said.
“I think they put you in stressful situations that you may encounter when you’re in the real workforce,” Spisak said. “I think it’s definitely going to help. I feel like they put a lot of stress on you, so then it’s kind of like maybe you won’t be so stressed when you’re out there.”
Jail and deaths
The teachers like to have some fun with sim lab experience, while also making sure it’s tense for the students, so students realize the sim lab is the time to make mistakes that would be unacceptable in the field.
“If they make a critical safety error in there – maybe they leave the bed in the air or the call bell is not in reach – very, very basic things, and that’s a critical safety error, and they actually get a two-minute penalty like in hockey,” Brien said. “They have to sit down and stare at the wall for two minutes, while we play ‘Jailhouse Rock.’”
Stisak said some of the things the teachers do can put a lot of pressure on you.
“Like, you can kill your patient accidentally,” Stisak said, referring to the teachers pretending a mannequin in the sim lab died. “I accidentally killed my patient yesterday.”
The teachers track the health of mannequins in the lab during the process – including the possibility of declaring the mannequin dead.
“We keep a tally of how many people go to jail and how many deaths there are,” Brien said. “If there’s a death, we have a little ceremony – Mrs. Shedd and I. We play “Taps,” and we come in, we have our little ceremony. So it’s great fun for us. But they struggle a little. Some students have a harder time than others. Maybe, emotionally they’re harder on themselves if they struggle, but we know when to back off.”
‘Choose your own adventure’
Brien and Shedd also put their acting skills to use during the sim lab – by both giving the mannequins personalities and acting as other characters themselves.
“We all kind of have our bits, our roles, that we play in there,” Brien said. “I play a doctor. I play a visiting friend. She plays a pretty rambunctious daughter, if you will. We like to say it’s choose your own adventure too. Depending on what the student does, we switch it up.”
Chery said some of the teachers’ scenarios can really catch you off guard.
“I had a patient yesterday who kept running out of the hospital to go get beer,” Chery said. “I was stressed out. It was stressing me out.”
But because of the long-term benefit toward becoming an LPN, Chery likes how the teachers create real-life scenarios like that.
“For instance, I’m with a patient trying to get her on the commode, and you’ve got the agitated patient trying to run out and get beer,” Chery said. “He’s trying to constantly run out because he’s agitated and very confused, so it’s just like you have to hurry up and stop what you’re doing. ‘You stay right there. Thank you. I’ll be right back.’ Then you have to hurry up and take your gown off and stuff, wash your hands and run out the building to catch the patient.”
Brien said students sometimes stop and panic or don’t know what to do, but they have to learn to figure it out.
“Even yesterday, one of the mannequins fell out of bed,” Brien said, noting that teachers rolled with it and made it part of the experience. “All right, what do we do when the patient falls? So we can put them through these scenarios that hopefully if they have that scenario in the future, they’ll be able recall how we worked through it.”
Herkimer-Fulton-Hamilton-Otsego BOCES Adult Practical Nursing Program students at work in the program’s simulation lab.
Herkimer-Fulton-Hamilton-Otsego BOCES Adult Practical Nursing Program instructor Erin Brien (left) and part-time day student Sara Jones (right) discuss a patient during the program’s simulation lab.