Baltimore , Maryland
June 25, 2023
June 25, 2023
June 28, 2023
Biomedical Engineering Division (BED)
10
10.18260/1-2--42442
https://peer.asee.org/42442
164
Dr. Loay Al-Zube is an expert in technical, statistical, and computational analysis of biomedical systems. Dr. Al-Zube utilizes engineering tools and solutions to address biomedical challenges and enjoy employing mathematics and programming to characterize and simulate biomedical systems and processes. He answered questions and published research in top journals in many areas including orthopedics, biomechanics, tissue engineering, medical waste management, modeling, and simulation.
Dr. Sara Dorris is an expert in the nursing field, with focus areas in Medical Surgical Nursing, Family Nurse Practitioner, and Critical Care. Dr. Dorris is known for expanding the educational foundation of nurses with the utilization of interdisciplinary learning within didactics, clinical rotations, and simulation.
Dr. Dorris is an educator and a practicing provider for an orthopedic surgery group. Research focus has been on patient centered care, pharmacology, advancement of technology for improved care, simulation, and most recently the interdisciplinary approach of biomedical engineering students and nurses. Dr. Dorris has presented on an array of topics at state and national conferences. Dr. Dorris is also apart of the peer-review committee for the nursing national board examination.
Work in Progress: Clinical Immersion Model for Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Students with Experienced Nurses
Key words: Biomedical Engineering, Nursing, Clinical Immersion, Design and Development Loay Al-Zube, Sara Dorris
Abstract: The first phase in the product design and development process is need identification. There are many factors that can affect biomedical engineers’ readiness and ability to identify healthcare providers' clinical needs. Some of these factors include age, maturity, and prior experience with healthcare providers. Other factors include healthcare providers' own communication style and the type of information that they are providing. Clinical experiences among biomedical engineering (BME) students are limited by access and exposure and are rarely addressed in undergraduate biomedical engineering curricula. This paper proposes and assesses a new clinical immersion model for biomedical engineering undergraduate students with nurses. The model facilitates engaging and interactive learning community of researchers, nurses, and BME students. We launched a summer clinical immersion program allowing rising juniors and seniors in Biomedical Engineering to experience, empathize, observe, and communicate with various nurses in clinical setting. The goals were to identify and research unmet clinical needs and challenges, build a database of clinical challenges facing nurses in small healthcare institutions, assess participants technology-driven problem-solving skills, identify BME students career aspirations, and investigate the factors that affect BME students’ readiness and ability to identify unmet clinical needs and challenges and to develop solutions and/or products to address these unmet needs and challenges. The proposed model leveraged a local hospital Summer “Student Experience Educational” program to facilitate the clinical experience. The study utilized various surveying models to collect comprehensive datasets of participants feedback and key clinical unmet needs and challenges. Biomedical engineering students’ feedback was obtained from questionnaires prepared by the research group pre- and post-immersion. Three different questionnaires were prepared: a Career Aspiration questionnaire, an Engineering Design Self-efficacy questionnaire, and a Trends & Behavior questionnaire. All questionnaires were filled in the university. All questionnaires were approved by the educational institution Institutional Review Board. The implemented model resulted in clinically informed BME students who are certain about their career aspirations into becoming engineers engaging in designed and development activities, who are also certain about their structured technology-driven problem-solving skills. After the immersion experience, participated BME students reported improvement in their abilities to perform key engineering tasks such as documenting technical matters, learning new things and research, empathize with observed clinical needs and challenges, identifying unmet clinical needs, and effectively communicating with nurses. One of the identified clinical challenges was selected by 2 of the participating BME students to be the focus of their senior capstone design project. Unlike other immersion programs, the new proposed model provided students with a prolonged summer clinical experience (68 hours in 4 clinical departments) with a specific and consistent group of healthcare providers, experienced nurses. This selection and consistency with whom to be with in the clinical setting were proven to be valuable in achieving the immersion experience goals.
Al-Zube, L., & Dorris, S. (2023, June), Board 13: Work in Progress: Clinical Immersion Model for Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Students with Experienced Nurses Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--42442
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