Coastal Alabama’s Simulation Program Accredited

Coastal Alabama Community College’s Nursing and Allied Health division has been granted provisional accreditation for its Simulation Program by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, FOX10 reported. The college’s simulation labs are on its Atmore and Fairhope campuses and were developed to train students in providing safe patient care in complex, rapidly changing healthcare environments. Simulation experiences provide access to a platform of guided—yet autonomous—learning in a safe environment that affords educational opportunities in the areas of critical thinking, clinical judgment, teamwork, communication, collaboration, delegation and prioritization. The society only lists three other Alabama facilities as accredited: Samford University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and UAB Children’s of Alabama. Full accreditation is only possible for programs with at least two years of outcomes data. The provisional accreditation application spanned a 751-page document and 80 separate criteria and resulted in a virtual site visit on September 1, during which the program’s processes and outcome development were critiqued, and the labs went through a peer review. The provisional accreditation runs through December 2023, and the deadline to apply for full accreditation is July 2023.