New GW Lab Named After Former INQRI Grantee

George Washington University’s School of Nursing recently opened a new skills and simulation laboratory at the school’s Virginia Science and Technology Campus. The “Johnson Lab” is named after the School of Nursing founder, and former INQRI Grantee, Jean Johnson.

The new facility will serve as a virtual hospital and includes beds for 10 mannequins that simulate patients from infants to the elderly.

RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows program alumna Pamela Jeffries serves as the current dean of the School of Nursing and was instrumental in the launch of the lab.

“When you look at traditional clinical training, if you don’t have sims, you are always a student nurse and always following your instructor,” Jeffries told GW Today. “And then you graduate, and you are an RN, and if you’ve never functioned as an RN before, that’s a problem. What we’re doing here is we are having you rehearse your roll.”

Johnson’s INQRI-supported work, in collaboration with Shoshanna Sofaer, helped to shed light on whether some of the National Quality Forum's nursing sensitive measures are perceived as meaningful by consumers. The team conducted focus groups with recently hospitalized patients to understand their perception of the measures. Consumers found several patient safety measures to be very compelling, and clearly believed that nurses had a significant role in hospital quality. However, consumers did not think nurses should be advising patients to quit smoking, stating that nurses have better things to do with their time. The team learned that overall the public, while valuing nurses highly, has an incomplete understanding of their job duties and to whom they are accountable.