Nursing students get hands-on experience at UC's 1819 Innovation Hub

Students at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Nursing are among the first at UC to get their hands on cutting edge technology at UC’s 1819 Innovation Hub. Several groups of nursing students spent time during the first part of the fall semester learning about 3D printers, laser cutters and other technology in what are called makerspaces.

The College of Nursing embraced the Innovation Hub in the summer by holding its annual two-day retreat there, attended by approximately 110 faculty and staff.

"I know that you, as faculty, are constantly creating,” Greer Glazer, PhD, dean of the College of Nursing told the group. "Nurses are constantly creating. One thing I’m very hopeful of is you’re teaching our students to innovate from the very first day they’re here.”

Matt Rota, PhD, assistant dean of technology for the College of Nursing, says the inspiration behind having the retreat at the Innovation Hub was all Glazer’s idea. "When she learned this space was going to be opened, Greer saw the potential and opportunities and invited faculty to participate,” says Rota.

As part of their regularly scheduled classes in the College of Nursing, students got tours of the makerspaces, seeing demonstrations of the technology available to them and also getting tutorials on creating an app.

Senior nursing student Ryan Schwiers says the exercise got him thinking about what sort of app he would create.

"An app on IV medicine capabilities could be useful because right now the only way to look those up is to research each one individually,” he says. "With an app, you could save a common medication to your library and later on, you could quickly check to see if different medications that you were going to use on a patient were compatible, which could really be important in an emergency situation.”

Schwiers is one of the students in the Leadership and Management for Professional Nursing Practice class taught by Rich Prior, DNP, associate professor in the College of Nursing who toured 1819 with his students.

"We wanted to expose them to the Innovation Hub so if they have some ideas, or things they want to work on, they’ve had some experience with the space,” says Prior. "If they see something in a clinical setting that they think they have an idea for, something that would help with patient care, they can come over and work on a prototype.”

Senior Jack Stigler says having the Innovation Hub at their disposal will change the way he and his fellow students learn.

"It’s really cool to be here,” he says. "it’s not something we normally get to deal with where we get to create our own stuff, it’s usually already created for us and we just learn how to use it. Here we get the chance to start thinking on our own and being innovative.”