Title: 48x36 Trifold Poster Template
 1Simulated Hospital Environment For Nursing 
Education 
Advisors Fatma Mili, PhD, CSSE Laura Pittiglio, 
PhD, RN, School of Nursing Meghan Harris, PhD, 
RN, School of Nursing  
Tomia Hines Fort Valley State University Fort 
Valley, Georgia
Reshard Horne Huston-Tillotson 
University Austin, Texas
David Williams Tennessee Technological 
University Cookeville, Tennessee
MEDICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA
PROBLEM
APPROACH
STUDENT EVALUATION
The best fit graph of a patients oxygen 
saturation between two doses of albuterol.
The Health Resources and Services Administration 
has reported that in order to meet the projected 
demand for nurses from 2000 to 2020, the U.S. 
must graduate approximately 90 percent more 
nurses from U.S. nursing programs2. The 
American Association of Clinical Nurses also 
reported that U. S. nursing schools turned away 
40,285 qualified applicants due to a lack of 
faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, 
clinical preceptors, and budget constraints1. A 
method allowing faculty to train students more 
efficiently, consequently, permitting more 
students to be admitted into nursing programs in 
order to meet the demand for nurses, is needed.
BACKGROUND
- Extensibility and scalability 
- Realistic experience 
- Experience driven by learning objectives 
- Customized experience 
- Live data
-  VI-MED, started in 2007, is a software teaching 
 tool created for nursing faculty and students.
-  For the students, VI-MED must provide a safe, 
 realistic environment allowing them to learn
 through experimentation and trial and error.
-  For the faculty, the system must allow educators 
 to customize the experience that students will
 have during the game and have access to the
 assessment of student performance.
-  The objectives for the first version of VI-MED 
 were to prove feasibility of the project and to
 test acceptability and usability among the
 nursing faculty and students.
-  Since the system is fully functional, proving 
 the feasibility, and with acceptance established
 through restricted testing, VI-MED is ready
-  for Phase II of its development. 
- The Medical Encyclopedia contains functions that 
 will cause each patients vital signs to change
 depending on the diseases assigned to them and
 treatments given.
CUSTOMIZED LEARNING OBJECTIVES
-  The number of patients as well as their ailments 
 and
-  demographics are dictated by 
-  Published Data 
-  Course Objectives 
-  Student Needs
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
VI-MED is a hospital simulator intended to 
provide students and educators with a supplement 
to a standard curriculum which is more 
interactive than didactic learning and safer and 
more easily monitored than clinical training. 
With the use of VI-MED, nursing education will 
become more efficient because nursing faculty 
will have more resources and time to assess 
student performance. Our future research efforts 
include ? Comparing the existing mathematical 
model of patient evolution to other options. 
 ? Adding new diseases, interventions and their 
corresponding vital parameters. ? Adding 
evaluation algorithms that can identify more 
specific areas where student improvement is 
needed. ? Adding pediatrics patients to the game, 
emphasizing the different treatments age 
demographics require. ? Expanding the software to 
interface with databases maintained by 
national agencies. ? Gathering feedback from 
nursing students. ? Expanding the software to 
help train medical students.
This is a snapshot of the in game environment. 
Players will be able to affect patient vital 
signs by administering treatments. Decisions made 
by students during the intervention process 
demonstrates the critical thinking skills 
necessary in a realistic hospital environment. 
References
1 American Association of Colleges of Nursing. 
2007-2008 Enrollment and Graduations in 
Baccalaureate and Graduate Programs in Nursing. 
(Mar. 2008). 2 Human Resources and Services 
Administration. Projected Supply, Demand, and 
Shortages of Registered Nurses, 2000-2020. 
2002. URLhttp//www.ahcancal.org/researchdat
a/staffing/Documents/Registered_NurseSupplyDemand.
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