The beating heart of the health sciences program gets a new director
Keith Trisilla and college plan to enhance lab’s interprofessional functionality in the future.
From staff reports |
This spring, the College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences has hired a new simulation operations specialist, with an eye toward enhancing the college’s Health Simulation Laboratory’s functionality for interprofessional education.
Since the Nursing and Health Sciences Center was constructed in 2012, the Health Simulation Lab has been the beating heart of Lipscomb health science programs, and Keith Trisilla, a simulation specialist since 2008, hopes to make it even more valuable to the various programs.
As the simulation lab’s manager, Trisilla will coordinates smooth lab operations, assist
as an educator and facilitator of simulation-based training and evaluations, be the primary controller of simulated patient responses during training of medical scenarios and help faculty create, test and run scenarios for students, among other managerial duties.
“It is my responsibility to bring the learners a high quality simulation encounter that is as close to a real experience as possible,” said Trisilla. “I want Lipscomb to be the gold standard for simulation and a name people associate with simulation.”
Trisilla holds a Master of Medical and Healthcare Simulation from Drexel University College of Medicine, and has worked in simulation at A.T. Still University in Arizona, Bellarmine University in Kentucky, Samuel Merritt University in California and Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in Nashville, where he worked as associate operations manager for the university’s Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment since 2019.
Upon opening in 2012, the simulation lab featured 19 patient simulators, computerized mannequins that can display the symptoms of a range of illnesses and wounds, in an authentic hospital-like setting. The lab contains infant, child and adult mannequins as well as one patient simulator that displays a range of cardiac problems.
In 2017, the lab obtained three preemie simulators, representing 25-week old babies who weigh less than 2 pounds each, and a second, updated cardiac simulator, able to simulate 50 additional cardiac scenarios such as mild systolic heart failure, coronary disease and a pulmonary embolism.
In 2019, the simulation lab received five new patient simulators and a summer renovation created two private treatment areas and bisected the lab down the middle, allowing two classes to receive instruction at the same time without noise pollution.
Trisilla and the college’s future hopes and dreams for the lab include an updated camera system and a re-construction project to create four dedicated simulation rooms, six dedicated exam rooms, two dedicated debriefing rooms and an open space for skills practice.
“This will help learners experience high quality simulations in a private space where the learner can focus with minimal distractions,” said Trisilla.