ACIE Award 2010
Simulations for Teaching Students How to Transfer Medically Fragile Patients
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Ketki RainaOccupational Therapy5028 Forbes Tower 412-383-6614 kraina@pitt.edu |
Every occupational therapy student must learn to transfer clinically complex patients from a hospital bed to a chair or wheelchair. However, student evaluations indicate that current teaching methods do not address acute care environments. Ketki Raina and Joanne Baird, Occupational Therapy, are using their ACIE project to create clinical scenarios for students to participate in, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation Education and Research (WISER), with the institute’s high-technology patient simulation mannequins.
Students, randomized into three groups, receive different combinations of teaching methods in terms of active participation or observation. Active participation will allow students to hone their transfer skills by performing the transfer, while active observation will require students to complete peer competency ratings while observing their classmates perform the transfers. Comparison of student performance between groups will establish the effectiveness and cost/benefit ratio of the teaching methods, and future learning modules will reflect these findings.

Dr. Ketki Raina demonstrates how to use the simulation mannequin in a clinical setting.

