Multiprofessional Skills Lab

Simulations support the learning and teaching of required skills without subjecting patients to any direct risk. Carrying out practical work based on real-life situations assists in the teaching of both critical thinking and decision making, and self-awareness skills. The Multiprofessional Skills Lab (MPSL) allows students of Applied Health Sciences, Physiotherapy and Security & Safety Engineering to practice these skills in a simulated environment.

The Lab is equipped with the various types of beds found in hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation clinics. For practical exercises there is also a simulation doll and a whole variety of medical and nursing materials and aids. A physiotherapy treatment table is also available.

The Skills Lab is also equipped with a reception area and integrated office such as is found in hospitals and practices. These include medicine cabinets, filing systems for patients records and work space for hygienic work, as well as ergonomic furniture and a circadian lighting system simulating a day and night rhythm.

In the Lab, students gain the practical skills needed in hospitals. The Multiprofessional Skills Lab can also be used for research, for example as part of the Applied Health Promotion master's programme.

Room

O 1.02b Furtwangen Campus

“Off to the lab” means “Off to bed”

It doesn’t have that sterile hospital smell. And no staff in white coats running through the corridors. But as soon as you enter the HFU “Multiprofessional Skills Lab” on the Furtwangen Campus, you feel like you‘re in a hospital ward. With hospital beds, catheter tubes, ventilators, drip stands, operating theatre equipment and even a tracheostomised “patient” – students take a deep dive into the world of medicine and nursing they are being prepared for at the Faculty of Health, Safety, Society, in the “Applied Health Sciences” programme, for example.

“Our students will later be working in healthcare, in the broadest sense of the word, and in areas where consulting plays a major role,” says Prof Dr Peter König, the Dean of Studies for “Applied Health Promotion” and Director of the Care and Technology Lab, one of the 10 research institutes at HFU. “That’s why everyone here has to get into bed at some point. It is vital that the students experience personally what it’s like, for example, to be repositioned or to sit in a wheelchair. They also need to experience what nursing means in terms of closeness and distance.”  

The Multiprofessional Skills Lab is used for both teaching and research. In the second semester students are given insights into practical procedures. These include the simulation of an operation (usually rather gruesome), being made aware of the necessity for hygiene rules (crucially important even before corona), and the chance to try out in a wheelchair how disabled-friendly Furtwangen really is, and experience how people react to “people on wheels” (at times sobering).

Such experiences don’t just provide theoretical knowledge. They often give students a whole new motivation to improve the situation, to come up with new ideas and to go into research. The Care and Technology Lab currently has ten projects, including research into dementia and palliative care for children.

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