Clinical Learning Skills Laboratory

The Clinical Skills Lab is a state-of-the-art learning center and serves as a major learning resource environment for the KU School of Nursing. Located on the first floor of the School of Nursing, the center is a multifunctional teaching and learning laboratory that provides an excellent opportunity for independent learning, self and mediated instruction, computer-based instruction and the practice of nursing skills. The center offers opportunities for teaching and learning in the cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains.

Nursing students develop not only psychomotor skills, but participate in a variety of programmed activities and case scenarios that help strengthen critical thinking, decision making, delegation and team work. We in the School of Nursing believe that learning is a life-long process. In the Skills Lab, students engage in active learning experiences that enable them to be self-directed learners. A solid grounding in the underlying scientific principles of technical skills helps students translate learning from the lab to a variety of clinical settings.

After recent construction, the learning lab has grown from six individual teaching areas to eleven. Included in the Skills Laboratory are a home-health area (occupational students), a birthing bay for our midwifery students, and three newly-purchased Vital Anne’s. The Vital Anne’s are computer-based active manikins that allow nursing students to perform basic physical assessment and clinical skills. These new computer-based manikins were successfully used in the Capstone Final of our 2006 summer students. Attached to the Skills Laboratory are 10 fully equipped examination rooms with video capacity along with our newly constructed Intensive Care room that holds our latest addition – SimMan, a human patient simulator.

The Skills Lab employs 15 graduate teaching assistants per semester under the direction of Sally H. Whitaker, RN, MS, Clinical Skills Laboratory Director and Assistant Director Shonte’ Hutson. We work closely with the entire School of Nursing faculty to coordinate activities and learning opportunities. With input from the School of Nursing Curriculum Committee, we identify resources appropriate to support and enhance the curriculum and meet specified outcomes for students.