Thanks to a new clinical simulation lab, students of Lehigh Carbon Community College's nursing department can rehearse behaviors without placing its clients at risk.

The school's nursing department held an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony at LCCC Tamaqua on Thursday to showcase the clinical simulation lab at the school.Jennifer Kalenkoski, president of the LCCC chapter of Student Nurses Association of Pennsylvania, presided over the event held at the Morgan Center.Kalenkoski was elected president of the organization at the 65th annual National Student Nurses Association Convention earlier this month in Dallas.A demonstration followed, along with tours and demonstrations of the simulator.Barbara Lupole, director of nursing, said the simulation lab is one-of-a-kind."This is state-of-the-art," Lupole said. "There is nobody that has better than these."Dr. Mary Brinker, assistant professor of nursing, said the college is now able to offer high-fidelity clinical simulation to its nursing students.Brinker said the high-fidelity simulators allow for enhanced realism as a patient's clinical case scenario unfolds.She said the simulator has many features that allow for real clinical presentations of a clinical situation and reactions in that moment as the nursing student implements patient care."Having this allows the students to acquire and build clinical reasoning skills as they think through the clinical situation," Brinker said. "Doing this in a safe environment such as a lab setting allows for errors to occur because theses errors would not be on a real patient."Another advantage is that the nursing student is living the RN role that allows him or her to gain insight of details of responsibilities RNs encounter to maintain safe patient care. Out on the real clinical, the students do not have the ability to engage in the RN role fully," she added.Brinker said that during the debriefing sessions, the students reflect on what went well and what they could change. Allowing the students to reflect, and discuss what just occurred, allows them to see what they did well and what they missed that may have caused the patient simulator clinical situation to deteriorate more."This is the most important part of simulation, because each student is recalling old knowledge, as well as implementing newfound knowledge as many perspectives are being discussed," she said. "Many nursing concepts become clear for them during the debriefing session for the building of clinical reasoning."The patient simulators are funded as part of a grant from the John E. Morgan Foundation, as well as through the college's federal Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education grant.An open house was held at the Schnecksville campus' patient simulation lab last month.For more information on the nursing program at LCCC, go to

www.lccc.edu/academics/health-care-sciences.