Lakehead nursing students getting hands-on training in new lab

The hands-on education provided in Lakehead University's new nursing lab is "essential" to preparing students to enter the health care field, a third-year nursing student said.

The new lab was officially opened on Tuesday, and is located in a former forestry classroom in the Braun Building on Lakehead's Thunder Bay campus.

The lab includes 10 beds, each of which has a mannequin that will help students practice their skills.

"This lab will be the home for all incoming first years and current second years as they move in through the program," third-year nursing student Erin Hamilton said. "I was in the older lab, which had just slightly less beds, but the same availability to practice the same skills."

"This just has more updated equipment that will be seamless when you go into practice," she said. "For example, the IV pumps are the same ones that they use in the hospitals that we practice in."

Hamilton said the lab will allow students to practice those skills in a safe setting where they have time to make mistakes.

"You'll have time to do skills multiple times, and then you'll be able to practice it in your actual hospital placement," she said. "And that just adds to your plethora of experience when you go to enter the workforce."

School of Nursing director Kristen Jones-Bonofiglio said the students will be able to develop various skills on the mannequins, including caring for wounds and giving injections.

"It's really important for us to have these large lab spaces for our students so that they can have individualized practice," she said. "Only two students at a bedside."

Jones-Bonofiglio is also a graduate of Lakehead's nursing program, but things were different when she attended.

"There was one nursing lab back when I graduated, and I can remember using things like oranges for injections," she said. "Now, obviously, we have the technology, and it's about really helping our nursing students to anticipate and calm their anxieties a little bit about what they might experience, so they can fully engage once they get into clinical areas."