Western Sydney University has introduced Australia’s first healthcare education simulator, known as the Blended Learning Interactive Simulation (BLIS) Suite.
The fully immersive training simulator puts nursing and allied healthcare students in the heart of a busy hospital emergency room where they can interact with patients and make on-the-spot decisions, all with a simple touch of a screen.
Located at the University’s Campbelltown campus, the BLIS suite from Simovation Interactive Technologies is one of the world’s best research, learning and teaching facilities, providing researchers with a virtual classroom that simulates a real-life healthcare environment, allowing for treatment decision-making across the lifespan and from diverse contexts.
Professor Jane Frost, Interim Dean of the School of Nursing and Midwifery, said the BLIS suite creates a range of different immersive educational experiences for students across nursing and midwifery and health sciences including paramedicine, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and traditional Chinese medicine.
“The BLIS suite is an immersive room that does far more than setting the scene, it allows learners to engage in a very hands-on way,” Frost said. “Students can touch the projections on the wall to reveal additional details and engage with simulated patients in real time.”
“Students needing to understand procedures in an operating theatre, for example, could be immersed in an operating room environment and witness a surgery,” she continued. “They could tap on the draw of their emergency trolley, which would open to reveal tools, or they could pull up patient notes, blood test results, ECG’s or count swabs. This learning tool will allow students to take the theoretical knowledge they have learnt and put it into practice, before they eventually enter more high-pressure environments.”
Dr Navin Naidoo, the grant lead from the School of Health Sciences, said the immersive technology would enhance experiential learning and signified a leap forward in research and teaching capacity.
“The virtual classroom can simulate any environment including aged care, a hospital or other healthcare settings and even road accidents or gender-based violence contexts,” he said.
“The facility was conceptualised by a multidisciplinary team of experts from across the University’s healthcare offering and recognises a need to equip future healthcare providers with the ability to serve the unmet needs of diverse communities.”
The facility also features built in Zoom capabilities to extend the benefits of the experience to those joining via livestream or recording.
The Blended Learning Interactive Simulation Suite project was funded by a Pipeline Research Infrastructure grant to unlock research and learning opportunities.
Professor Sarah Lewis, Dean of the School of Health Sciences and Campbelltown Campus Provost said that the BLIS suite resource puts Western Sydney University and the Macarthur Health Precinct on the international stage.
“Western is world leading in having Australia’s first BLIS suite facility, and our research will amplify and innovate in investigating immersive learning for health care provisions with priority populations in high fidelity environments,” said Lewis.
“We cannot wait to engage researchers and educators, local and global, in partnerships to improve health care delivery.”
