NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences Increases Enrollment with UbiSim

NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences has been using UbiSim since 2019. Since then, this large public institution in the Netherlands has scaled their nursing program to welcome more students, authored dozens of their own scenarios in Dutch, and have won a prestigious award for their program 'Future proof nurses: simulating the nurse of the future', which was heavily influenced by their use of immersive virtual reality. 

Daniel Brinckmann, VR Innovator and Project Leader at NHL Stenden pioneered the use of UbiSim, and Daphne Niewijk is the impressive student and teaching assistant who creates some of their custom scenarios.

Key takeaways:

• NHL Stenden’s innovative use of UbiSim VR has expanded its nursing program
• Daphne, a student at the university, has authored over twenty scenarios herself
• Students learn real-life nursing skills in immersive VR

Working in Partnership with Hospitals

Daniel: “Part of my job is to work in collaboration with hospitals. They provide us with internship spots and scenario ideas we can create in UbiSim, and we let their nurses train in VR on our campus. So we not only use UbiSim for the education of our students but also for further education of the nurses already working within the field.”

Growing Enrollment

Daniel: “We are the only applied university in the Netherlands that has had an increase of students welcomed to our program. Because of our relationship with hospitals and enabling them in UbiSim, we have been able to extend training to our second-year students, too, where this was not the case before.”

Authoring Custom Scenarios in UbiSim

Daphne: “I write all of the scenarios we use within UbiSim, give teachers the information they need to start building lessons with them, and teach them how to use the platform.”

Daphne: “I had an internship with cardiology patients, so it was quite easy for me to program these scenarios into UbiSim. Once you get the hang of it, it's really not difficult to create custom scenarios. I’ve authored over twenty. The teachers test them to make sure they’re correct.”

Using VR for Nursing Skills

Daphne: “We often use UbiSim in the Nursing Skills class where students learn clinical reasoning, communication with SBAR, and the ‘treat first what kills first’ method.”

Students Creating Scenarios 

Daphne: “My bachelor's thesis is about how students themselves can write virtual reality simulations within UbiSim because a lot of students do have scenarios they saw within their internships that would be really a good evaluation process to write a scenario about within UbiSim. then I looked at what benefits that would also have for students because I personally learned a lot about nursing and clinical reasoning by writing those simulations. ”

Addressing the Nursing Shortage

Daniel: “There’s a big nursing shortage in the Netherlands, but we’re trying to work with the Minister of Education to allow UbiSim to count for clinical hours.”

Preparing Future Nurses with UbiSim

Daphne: “UbiSim has definitely helped prepare me for clinical reasoning and communication, which I’ll have to demonstrate in assessments before becoming a nurse.”

Experiencing Realism in VR

Daphne: “UbiSim combines all of the fidelities into one. You don’t have to pretend you’re talking to a manikin while your classmate is voicing it. You have patients in UbSim that talk back to you and they make sounds that you can’t as easily replicate with manikins.”