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Welcome to this episode of the NLN podcast Nursing EDge Unscripted the Surface track and thank you for joining us. This episode is entitled, "Celebrating Partnership: Transforming Innovation One Year at a Time. Our conversation today will focus on celebrating partnership that forges the path toward innovation such as the introduction of simulation into nursing education. We will also discuss how long-standing partnerships evolve over time to transform innovation into new territory
such as competency-based education. Lastly, we will take a look into the future of health care and nursing education to discuss what's next on the horizon to help save one million lives. And to help us today we have two special guests. Both guests work for Laerdal Medical, a long-standing strategic partner with the National League for Nursing. Cansu Akarsu is the Vice President for Healthcare Education - Lifesaver Solutions at
Laerdal Medical. Rosie Patterson is the Vice pPesident Sales North America. Welcome Rosie and Cansu. Thank you so much for joining me on this conversation. I'm really looking forward to talking about the importance of partnership and really the innovation work that can come out of a really good partnership, especially one that's been lasting for 20 years between the NLN and Laerdal. So thank you for
joining me. The first question I wanted to start with was I was really inspired by a keynote speaker at IMSH and I think maybe both of you were there. His name was Ryan Leek and he shared this breadcrumb slide, that's what he called it and it pretty much had really important people and events that led him to where he was standing on stage that day, including like the person who opened the door for him and his kindergarten teacher.
So I wanted to...I thought it might be fun for us to start our conversation today I'm asking you what your breadcrumbs have been to lead you to where you are today in your roles at Laerdal Medical. I'm going to start with you Cansu. Do you want to share your breadcrumbs with us?
Yeah I love the question. What comes to my mind is a bit a big breadcrumb, if that makes sense, so I want to refer to my big breadcrumb that has impacted so many parts of my life both professionally and personally. My background is industrial design and in my 20s I participated in a design challenge that was organized by Index Project in collaboration
with UNICEF. It was in Denmark and I was a student at the time and when I joined this network it was such a powerful group of individuals, companies and that's kind of how it unfolded that I built my career on design for social impact and Laerdal was also one of the companies that they had recognized. So both internships, other projects, and then Laerdal. It's just kind of
made its way. I joined Laerdal actually from our sister company, the not-for-profit company, Laerdal Global Health, which is focused on maternal and newborn health primarily. But the fun fact is I even met my husband through this organization, that's kind of a friend of a friend and meeting there at an after party kind of thing. So I think that's an important, it is an important breadcrumb. This is a major breadcrumb.
So when I met Rosie I had transitioned from Laerdal Global Health to Laerdal Medical and I was implementing design thinking in the company. I was also working with our leadership teams on our 2030 goal, which is helping save one million more lives every year by 2030. So there were numerous strategy sessions that we facilitated and as part of that I met Rosie and I met so many other women leaders that inspired me to move into leadership.
I decided to take an Executive MBA specialized in digital business models and after that I took on the role of leading our health care education team and that brings Rosie back me again together because she has vast experience in this field and that also invited me to our partnership with the
National League for Nursing. So can you share a little bit more about the work you did with that global arm of Laerdal Medical and some of the innovation that you created to I think have really important social impact in health care? Absolutely.
I joined as an industrial designer and because Laerdal Global Health is also a place where we work a lot with our partners, I truly understood the value of that both partnerships with the end users who are midwives or midwifery educators or those professional associations who are implementing the solutions we do, but also the
organizations who we co-develop with. I actually have contributed with a few different projects and one of them is the MamaBirthie birthing simulator, which is a very low cost, very hands-on birthing simulator both wearable and you can put it on the table, etc. And it's training on normal birth so I think through this I also could see the value of prevention rather than intervention. This has been a major project of
mine in Laerdal Global Health. The other one was the Nifty Feeding Cup where we collaborated with Path, Seattle Children's Hospital and there I was championing this, really making this partnership happen with those organizations. That is wonderful Cansu. Thank you for sharing. I was wondering if I could hear Rosie some of your
breadcrumbs. Absolutely be glad to. I started my career at a company called Medical Plastics and Medical Plastics was a company in Texas that was very well known in anatomical modeling and some patient stimulation, but predominantly had a stake with nursing education in the military. We really worked very closely with thought leaders in the industry and I come from a family of nurses so I was really I came well equipped to really embrace working with nurse educators.
I have always been in sales and marketing but also have an opportunity to work with product development and that role is where I met Debra Spunt and I asked her to share with me what she did and why she was so passionate about it and I will tell you she shared with me and spent a lot of time with me and educated me to be the person that I am today when it comes to the importance of simulation in nursing education. I think she also inspired me to take this up a
notch. So fast forward to the year 1999 - Laerdal and Medical Plastics had a joint venture. We manufactured a product together called Resusci Anne Modular System and to decide was the company, we're dating, would they eventually marry us? And they did in the year 2000. Now in that time, we were also building a simulator and to converge both the Laerdal technology with the Medical Plastics manikins we launched our first simulator called
SimMan. This was in the early 2000s. Now knowing what I knew about nursing education I thought medicine is all about simulation, but the nursing market is really important and we need to find a partner that can help us understand the research if there is any, and if there isn't any, how might
we partner with said organization. The NLN - I always went to the conference but I really didn't know how to approach them, but I did know that a competitor of ours had a three-year agreement with them to do research in simulation and I also heard that it wasn't going so well. So I made a trip to New York City to meet with Ruth Corcoran, who was the CEO at the time, and Terry Valiga and I'll
tell you - they were tough cookies. They were like, so what is it that you have that's so different? And they challenged us and so from there the company just grew flourished but the partnership was really just getting to know people and build some trust among the two organizations and really find some common
synergies that we could work together on. So the partnership has been evolving over the years, but this was really around getting started and could simulation make a difference in nursing education and having Pam Jeffries and Mary Anne Rizzolo as the orchestrators of this multi-site study that went on for three years and we supported from the background
and learned along with them. It was an amazing transformation in nursing education and to see the pedagogy change, and the simulation design scale, the framework that Pam developed get implemented
across the world, has been phenomenal. And just to tap into that, how I got to meet Cansu was I served three years as the managing director in the UK and Ireland and then I came back to the States and did a business development role, but then I was asked to go and manage our Asia Pacific region for three years based in Hong Kong, but traveled
all across. In one meeting I made a trip to Norway and I met Cansu there and she was such a lively individual and she was really facilitating some dialogues and workshops and you know, I just clicked with her and I thought this lady has a lot to offer. I've got to get to know her a little bit better. So we talked over the years and then this project has really kind of brought
us together closer. Her work in nursing education, her role as it evolved from the global health side to her nursing role now has really put us together and I think, yes, I've been around a few years and so Cansu being a young in the organization in this field she has said Rosie, can you help
me and we just connect. We connect regularly to talk about issues in different parts of the world, but the beautiful thing is we can take what we've learned in North America and we can leapfrog in other countries and those countries want to know how we're doing simulation here and we did with the NLN's help launch a program in China in 2017. It was quite successful. So hopefully that helps you connect the dots and the breadcrumbs with us.
That is amazing Rosie and what I'm hearing is first of all, I think it's so incredible that you were there at this like moment where that question was being first asked, like can simulation support nursing education? And to be there at that pinnacle moment and I don't mean to be super dramatic about it, but it is so important to me because simulation has been such a central part of my development and specialty in teaching. I remember the moment I saw simulation
for the first time I was like - this is it. It just clicked. It just made sense to me so for you to be there at those first moments where those stakeholders and those partners and those collaborations were coming together.
Pam Jeffries and Mary Anne Rizzolo and and many others were were helping to take what medicine had started and I would even say military, right, you mentioned the military and our other interdisciplinary partners where we get inspired where that was kind of being these first few leaders in nursing education were taking that and pulling it into our current curricula our current teaching strategies, I just think that's amazing.
Then this intersection with Cansu where I think Cansu, I see you as having this energy and this passion and fire of making change and Innovation happen right now but more importantly I think in the future. You're at this part where you and Rosie have come together with Rosie's foundation in simulation and then the two of you pushing forward into how can we really propel nursing education and make it better.
We're going to get into that. I'll, as a little kind of a precursor, right, we're going to talk about some competency-based education. We're going to get to that, but I think is where we're hoping to go. I think Cansu you're just the person to help lead nursing education in that way and really support nursing education to move in that direction because it's challenging so
thank you both for sharing that. I will also share that where I also intersect with both of you is with a few breadcrumbs that I've had is I started my teaching in the academic setting in 2010. I started in a small community college and I was there for maybe five minutes and the director came to me and said, you know, we've got this manikin. It's in a box.
I also heard that Pam Jeffries at Johns Hopkins is running this statewide consortium thing and I have to send somebody and it looks like you, I bet you like technology, don't you? I was like, sure I guess, I mean I know how email works. She said well I just need someone to learn how to run these manikins and get them out of the box so will you go? So I went and met Pam Jeffries and that's where I got my start in simulation education right from...like how
fortunate was that, right? Right from the person, through Pam Jeffries and that experience I was able to make a transition into teaching with simulation full-time at University of Maryland School of Nursing in the Debra Spunt Simulation Lab and I was mentored there by Mary Fey and Mary Fey connected me to Sue Forneris, right and then I got therefore pulled into the NLN very excitedly and willingly. So I also want to share with you Rosie one very important thing.
While I had the sincere appreciation to work and the privilege to work at the Debra Spunt Simulation Lab, I never got to meet her. Can I share something with you? I happen to have something I'm really fond of and I hope you can see this Michelle and Cansu. This is a picture of the core members who started the NLN study with us and here you will see, let's see if I can do this from behind, you see Debra Spunt here in the pink and Mary Anne Rizzolo. And Pam Jeffries down in the
front. These were the core members of that original program and there's a lot to be said about Debra Spunt and you're describing her even though you didn't meet her. She was so fascinating, but never wanted to be in the limelight. Always in the background, never wanted anyone to recognize her. But when she was in this program she came to life. She was so passionate to teach the others because they were younger in simulation.
She was sort of a pioneer and led the way. So it's exciting that you got to walk in those footsteps. Well, it's really truly has been a privilege and my very early days of mentorship, I always say that I've had really important mentors by just sheer luck and the universe has put them together with me and I've had very important mentorship moments with each of those mentors that I continue to benefit from and to grow from and be able to share with others.
And that all really started in that Debra Spunt Simulation Lab. That's really where a lot of that came together for me, so thank you for sharing that and I'm so I always feel kind of sad when I think about not having met her, but I think having been introduced to so many of the people that have been inspired by her I feel like by osmosis there's some connection
there so thank you. And I'm looking forward to at the Summit where we always celebrate her contribution to simulation so I'm looking forward to that as well. The other thing I'd like to kind of transition us to is speaking of celebration is that I really believe that success is rarely achieved in isolation and there's been a very important partnership that you highlighted Rosie between the NLN and Laerdal Medical and this partnership we are celebrating
20 years of its work together. I wanted to hear a little bit, if you could talk about this partnership, how it's evolved and where we are today. Maybe and we can revisit our breadcrumbs. We talked about your professional breadcrumbs, but maybe we can talk about the breadcrumbs of the NLN and Laerdal. an idea to to do some collaborative research to see would simulation make a difference in nursing education and could it even help with the clinical
access shortage. We knew that there were several angles but really to understand could there be a standardized method in which we could measure and evaluate and debrief simulations? And I would say that that first three years set the foundation and the icing on our cake was the book that was published, that was not in the scope of work by the way. The book that was published came after the fact. Tore Laerdal is a very creative,
a generous person. He looked at some of the artwork and said, you know, I think Laerdal can maybe help with some of this and we can make it look much nicer. So of course the graphic artist got involved and helped with making sure that this book was very well articulated and had the right artwork in it. He became very interested in dissemination and so from there he said, okay, how will we disseminate this and what
is the next step that's needed? And Pam Jeffries said faculty development is a big gap. It's one thing to now have the research. It's another thing to educate the faculty in how to use simulation and how to integrate it into the curriculum. So we said about developing this online learning program called SIRC - Simulation Innovation Resource Center - where we had these
faculty development online modules. That was in order to help, but the NLN really pushed forward with this to say, look - we'll give you CEs if you take these courses and they will help your faculty. So we had to meet the expert immersed in the modules and so this became a way to help to really proliferate simulation education and nursing.
That was in 2006. So the research was 2003, SIRC was 2006, and 2009 we did more things and this evolved over many things but they all built off of that same simulation design framework and it was scaffolding over time and to say that this was not just in North America. This was known in other countries and we had representation as I said in many countries with Pam Jeffries, Mary Anne, Sue Forneris, Bev Malone
and this has just grown over time. I think with the future ahead of us there's so much more we could do. We are just getting started in this partnership. This is just the early days. That's amazing and I definitely want to get to this conversation about where we're going in the future especially with CBE or competency-based education. Before we get to that part though, Cansu, I was wondering if you can share a little bit about sort of the daily work of innovation.
It's one thing to be partners with two organizations that are very busy and have a big reach, that's like on a macro level. But on this micro day-to-day level, how does innovation get done? I think you being the design expert, I'd like to hear how from your perspective how you see that. You know, there is no recipe for innovation, but there are definitely good principles and work cultures and partnerships that can help innovation.
So maybe it could also help a little bit about how the different professions get involved in a way in innovation. The health care education team that I'm heading up, we craft the vision and strategy and the rolling action plans towards competency-based education and in close collaboration with the NLN, but also the
NLN member institutions. We really work from early days of exploration, discovery, need finding all the way through concept development and delivery of solutions, but also the implementation as well. It's from that really open questions that we've been asking to those institutions and the educators where I appreciated the primary challenges that are faced: the shortage of faculty and lack of clinical sites. And despite those challenges, the pressure to educate more students
at a higher quality. When you look at how that translates to what we then offer as solutions, it's really tools that help with educational strategies like peer-assisted learning or self-directed learning where the goal is to offload the faculty as much as possible but also, for instance, tools that will enable them to collect and track data on the student performance over time so they can actually take in and educate
more students. When it comes to clinical placement as well, there are alternative ways that we could provide clinical preparedness such as the simulation solutions of course, but also using virtual reality that we can talk about later as well. On an everyday basis it's a mix of business development, product management, design, educational specialist, marketing, and again also similar roles at Laerdal and the NLN working together.
I would love to hear from you as well Michelle because you collaborate closely with our educational specialists and in the co-development of the patient cases and how the assessments are provided and various solutions. I think you're even at the heart of making these things happen.
You know, it's funny Cansu, I've had several conversations with another colleague of mine two colleagues Dr. Rachel Onello, who's our usually my co-host my partner in crime here and Dr. Matthew Byrne and the three of us have had some deep, deep, really interesting nerdy conversations around how people it's really called in some of the literature third space, where people from different professions and this kind of interdisciplinary
platform come together with this purpose of either innovating or solving a problem and and get very intentional about getting into this space where this sort of like magic can happen and that magic of innovation, like you said, there's no recipe for it. I think that's because when these people in these different minds, like you said, like marketing and design and development and
education and medical, right? All these folks and technology as well and technology and development and data scientists. So just want to also add that. All of it, right? All these people come together to create this super magical thing. I think what it takes to do that is a little bit of... everyone has to be able to on some level blur the boundaries of their roles, of their expertise and blurring those boundaries allows for the creativity and the
agility. I think that has to happen when you're trying to either innovate for something new, create something that doesn't exist, or really solve a
problem. You just have to when people say think out of the box I think that blurring between 'I'm a nurse and I have to provide my nursing expertise.' Well, I'm a nurse but I'm also a human and I also have many different pieces of my experience like my life experience that I can bring into the conversation but also more importantly receive, it's more about receiving the dialogue and the creativity I think that happens when you
bring all these minds together. I think when we can really appreciate and get excited by these different people that come together in these different ideas I think that's when innovation has happened in my experience. When I went to Copenhagen to work in person with colleagues, with the design team at Laerdal Medical, it was and development, energy, everybody was there, right? It was just amazing. It was three days of just third spacing, getting it done and it was it was amazing.
It's also the fact that our professional backgrounds is just one aspect of diversity that we bring in. I think we are so many people from many different countries. I
was born in Turkey. I'm Turkish, Norwegian you know, and we have so many team members and Rosie, you've been in multiple countries leading various organizations of Laerdal so it's to acknowledge and appreciate and put teams together intentionally and foster diversity in them to enable that third space and more spaces also. We want to be conscious of our time boundaries. This conversation could go on and it will.
We will pick up with our conversation with Cansu and Rosie discussing innovations in nursing and competency-based education on our next episode. Thank you for joining us on this episode of NLN Nursing EDge Unscripted Surface. We hope you join us next time. Until then, remember: whether your water is calm or choppy, stay connected, get vulnerable, and dare to go beneath the surface.