INACSL 2022 Sim Media Center HealthySimulation.com Interviews – Part I
HealthySimulation.com was in attendance at the 2022 International Nursing Association of Clinical and Simulation Learning (INACSL) annual conference in mid-June in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As part of this year’s event, themed “Stronger Together,” HealthySimulation.com helped facilitate the Sim Media Center to host interviews with leaders across the healthcare simulation industry. This article is the first in a three-part series highlighting excerpts from these interviews, with this one sharing commentary from the current and future presidents of INACSL, another from Dr. Shelby Garner, an Associate Professor at Baylor University Louise Herrington School of Nursing (and who gave this year’s Hayden Vanguard Lectureship Keynote), and Anthony Battaglia, the CEO of Pocket Nurse.
HealtyhSimulation.com/INACSL President’s Interview
HealtyhSimulation.com: Where has INACSL been for the past two years and what lessons have we learned moving forward?
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Suzie Kardong-Edgren, Ph.D., RN, ANEF, CHSE, FAAN (Current INACSL President): One of the things that happened that were really big for us is that we moved to a new management company. It’s much larger, with many more resources and just the world opened up for us. We’ve been able to increase our membership by almost 500 members during the pandemic and put on two virtual conferences.
Laura Gonzalez, Ph.D., APRN, CNE, CHSE-A, ANEF, FAAN. VP (INACSL President-Elect): In my previous role at INACSL I was the VP and I was responsible for conference planning. I brought [the two conferences] to fruition, and can tell you all the work that goes into it. It was disheartening at first, but then I was so excited to see how quickly INACSL pivoted and was really able to bring this virtual conference to life twice and learn from each of them. I think what we did learn was we will probably always have a virtual component – this is not going away. This is the new normal.
HealtyhSimulation.com: Why should people be thinking about participating with INACSL in the future, both online and in-person?
Suzie Kardong-Edgren: I think the mission of an INACSL has always been the great use of it as a pedagogy. It’s not about the stuff it’s about how you teach with the stuff, right? We’ve always had the standards that we renamed the healthcare standards for simulation for best practice. I think we decided to really emphasize that is for everybody, because we heard so often, “well they’re nursing standards. They don’t apply to anybody else.”
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We said, well – no – good teaching is good teaching, no matter where you are. So I think we look forward to developing better standards using more of the research that’s becoming available. There was a lot of research done during COVID. I think that that will continue to be our claim to fame and be really working on the pedagogy of simulation.
Laura Gonzalez: What excites me right now is seeing that I think there’s a resurgence, a reenergizing.I think we’re gonna have a lot of development and grant writing and fun writing. People are so jazzed up to contribute to the body of nursing science and simulation.
I expect there to be a surge of content coming out, post-COVID. This is where the seeds are planted. I’m sure people are going home thinking about all the wonderful things [discussed at INACSL 22). That’s what INACSL brings to our community of users.
HealtyhSimulation.com/INACSL Interview with Dr. Shelby Gardern & Anthony Battaglia
HealthySimulation.com: Can you share with the audience here a little bit more about your work and what you’ve been able to accomplish?
Dr. Shelby Gardern: Going forward, we wanna continue to build simulation capacity in India. We have several projects that we’re looking at, and we really want to move our research to study clinical outcomes. We want to be able to show that the work that we think is helping patients is actually helping patients, and be able to measure that. That’s where we’re looking to go for the next few years.
HealthySimulation.com: What have you seen as the greatest challenge for creating a robust program overseas and how did you guys overcome some of those challenges?
Dr. Shelby Gardern: I would say the greatest challenge many researchers identify with is funding for those initiatives and funding begets funding. One of the very first grants I got was $2,000 an external grant, and my university matched it. So I had $4,000. It was a small grant that we were able to do a lot with it in India. It’s been a challenge also not being able to be on the ground there all the time, but that has also been a benefit because it’s really forced my colleagues to take ownership of the projects and to lead those projects and be very engaged.
Covid and all of the technology that came forced us to convert over to Zooms, and those types of things helped our partnership because, even though I wasn’t able to go, we were forced to really look at what kind of infrastructure we did not have that we needed to continue these partnerships.
HealthySimulation.com: Can you tell us just a little bit about how you got started with pocket protectors?
Anthony Battaglia: Right. So I was a medical ICU nurse. It was the question of, what are you gonna do growing up? So it was either a nurse practitioner or a CNA, and I just had this one product and it was called a Pocket Nurse, which is a pocket protector with a band hemostat pen line side of it. Actually, a pharmaceutical company picked it up. I started kind of with pharmaceutical promotions. Since I was a nurse, I just matched up the giveaway with the drug right. Classification. Okay.
We did pen lights and blood pressure cuffs, anything medically relevant. That kind of gave me the money to get started, and then I went to the local nursing schools to the skills lab because when I went to a nursing school it’s it was still a skills lab. We didn’t have simulation and I just started selling to them.
We just kind of started growing that business, and then eventually the pharmaceutical business kind of fell off because they don’t do that anymore. I kind of grew up with simulation because then schools started building simulation centers. We just kind of grew with the industry.
HealthySimulation.com: Do you believe that COVID-19 was a catalyst for the simulation industry globally?
Anthony Battaglia: When we started, we started with simulation in its infancy. It’s still in its toddler phase now. It’s proven to be a great way to learn and is functional for everybody. It definitely helps with peds and OB with clinical space because that’s always an issue with nursing school and clinical times states are subbing more simulation time for clinical time and that varies state by state. It’s really just an evolving learning space for everybody. I don’t see it ever going away. I just see it growing and getting better with VR, AR, and other modalities.
More About INACSL
INACSL’s mission is to advance the science of nursing simulation by providing worldwide professional development, networking resources, and leadership in defining healthcare simulation standards of best practice. Formally naming itself INACSL or the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning in 2002, the organization has grown from an all-volunteer organization based in Texas to a worldwide resource with over 2500 members. INACSL educational materials and resources can be used by anyone.
INACSL holds an annual four-day conference every June in various centers around the United States and Canada. The conference focus is mostly geared toward Nursing Education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Hospital education departments could also benefit from conference attendance. These events provide education sessions, research results, networking opportunities, and vendor exhibits for leading companies such as Laerdal, CAE Healthcare, SimulationIQ, Gaumard, B-Line Medical, KBPort, Pocket Nurse, 3D Systems, and more. In addition, INACSL provides webinars, leadership book clubs, and journal roundtables in a virtual format.
INACSL is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation. In addition to the standards of best practice, INACSL offers other online resources including homegrown solutions links, a bibliography of simulation articles, and resources for researchers. INACSL publishes the journal Clinical Simulation in Nursing with Dr. Nicole Harder as the current Editor-in-Chief.
Learn More About INACSL
Lance Baily, BA, EMT-B, is the Founder & CEO of HealthySimulation.com, which he started while serving as the Director of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas back in 2010. Lance is also the Founder and acting Advisor to the Board of SimGHOSTS.org, the world’s only non-profit organization dedicated to supporting professionals operating healthcare simulation technologies. His new co-edited Book: “Comprehensive Healthcare Simulation: Operations, Technology, and Innovative Practice” is available now. Lance’s background also includes serving as a Simulation Technology Specialist for the LA Community College District, EMS fire fighting, Hollywood movie production, rescue diving, and global travel. He lives with his wife Dr. Abigail Baily in Las Vegas, Nevada with their newborn daughter and two crazy dachshunds.
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