Beyond basics - health professional training gets real

The Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Western Australia (UWA) has made positive use of an unoccupied aged care facility by turning it into a clinical learning space for students of nursing, social work, podiatric medicine and medicine.

In 2011 the Beyond the Teaching Nursing Home project was established to provide a dedicated learning environment where students could practice activities with real people, as well as mannequins.

By virtue of its location, UWA was able to achieve this at their new campus, Bethanie Joondanna.

Bethanie Joondanna is an integrated retirement complex made up of two residential
aged care hostels and a group of independent living units.

On the ground floor of one of the hostels sits the newly refurbished clinical learning space where residents from the surrounding facilities can volunteer their time to simulating real-life patient scenarios with students.

In the same way that students might undertake a clinical placement, they are also able to go into the co-located aged care facilities to practice clinical procedures with residents in their own environment.

Students are kept on their toes as the residents respond and react as a patient might in an acute setting.

Rather than just carry out their task, students are forced to communicate the process as they would have to in professional practice.

UWA Master of Nursing Science, School of Population Health Associate Professor Rosemary Saunders says the unique advantage of the project is the engagement of older adults in health professional education.

“Older people are the largest group of people receiving care in any setting so it’s important that students have a good understanding of their needs,”  Associate Professor Saunders says.

She says the students working at Beyond the Teaching Nursing Home will not necessarily work in aged care, but their experience working with older adults will be valuable in a whole range of professional health environments.

“In some ways it demystifies the numerics of age,” she says.

“It’s not about age so much as the care and interaction.”

Associate Professor Saunders says a community conversation at the projects inauguration informed the residency of Bethanie Joondanna that student learning that would be taking place onsite.

Residents could then list or decline their availability through a consent process.

There is now a residents’ reference group which has initiated a feedback program.

Associate Professor Saunders says residents engaged in the project provide rich and helpful comment as to how the students provided simulated care to them, with sub-categories like communication, physical interaction and privacy.

Another aspect of the project evaluation showed residents themselves benefiting from the interaction with students.

“The information showed how it has contributed to their social engagement,” Associate Professor Saunders says.

“Some of them have even made friends on the campus.”

Bethanie acting CEO Chris How says the teaching initiative offers health professional students the unique opportunity to learn how older people wish to be treated.   

“Residents themselves have been able to show the students how they wish to be interacted with and communicated with," Mr How says.

"It’s something you just can’t learn from a text book."

Photo: Master of Nursing Science Student Tenille Hall with resident Ken Burt in the dedicated learning environment.