Simulation & Skills Center

Hands-on learning at the Resource Center for Innovation in Clinical Nursing Education

Its name is the Jean Johnson Schaefer (BSN'50) Resource Center for Innovation in Clinical Nursing Education (RCICNE). You’ll probably come to know it as the “Learning Lab,” but there’s so much more than simulated training happening around the Center.

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Inside the Learning Lab

This state-of-the-art learning lab is one component of the IU School of Nursing in Indianapolis' Learning Resources department that supports the school’s mission of training future nurses. The multimedia resource center provides computerized patient care simulations using simulators in a learning environment where nursing students, under the guidance of nursing professors, have the opportunity to:

Work in a realistic but non-threatening laboratory
Become familiar with instruments and equipment
Gain experience in recognizing problems
Develop decision-making skills
Refine patient care techniques to better prepare for participation in actual patient care experience

IU School of Nursing student Lia Sanchez participates in a simulation exercise in the Learning Lab.

Simulation: Where Nursing Skills Take Shape

IU nursing students step into the Learning Lab during their very first semester of nursing school.

Computerized manikins are at the core of simulation education, and can be assigned medical histories and programmed with vital signs, realistic voices, and even bodily fluids.

Read about how simulations prepare future IU nurses

IUPUI nursing students at the Simulation and Skills lab

High-tech learning resources

In the RCICNE, you will access audiovisual materials, computers, reserve readings, equipment, and supplies necessary for learning to become an IU Nurse. Faculty and staff in the school can receive support from Learning Resources staff in instructional design; Canvas; audio/visual, including Zoom, Kaltura, and distance classroom; and other educational technologies.

The RCICNE staff includes a simulation coordinator who works with faculty and students during simulation experiences and collaborates with interdisciplinary staff at The Simulation Center at Fairbanks Hall, a facility jointly operated by Indiana University School of Medicine, Indiana University School of Nursing, and Indiana University Health.

Inside you’ll find lab staff ready to assist students and faculty in the skills area with manikins, equipment, and supplies. They also assist teams during simulations.

Everything you need to prepare for patient care

The lab facility is divided into distinct areas:

Flex spaces (the traditional skills lab area) offer patient stations, manikins, beds, and equipment simulating a hospital environment. Students have opportunities to practice procedures from catheterization to cardiac monitoring using a plethora of manikins and equipment.
Examination areas, containing fully outfitted examination rooms, are used primarily for physical assessment classes.
Simulation areas, capable of capturing each learning session, allow students to practice hands-on critical care procedures for acute illnesses while faculty and lab technicians monitor and direct simulation sessions from a control room. The areas contain debriefing rooms where students may view live feeds of simulations, debrief simulations, or review saved sessions.