La Source, a long tradition of innovation
The first lay nursing school in the world, La Source has been at the vanguard of nursing ever since it was founded in Lausanne in 1859. For more than 160 years now, innovation has held a special place at La Source. The school has dedicated itself to developing and implementing innovative methods and practices aimed at improving the quality of nursing education and the quality of care delivered to patients.
A few milestones
- 1861: creation of first home care model
- 1929: first training programme for “visiting nurses” providing home care
- 1971: first consultations for diabetes education
- Early 1990s: first education programme intended for senior patients
- 2013: first Swiss CAS (Certificate of Advanced Studies) in nurse clinical assessment
What do we mean by “innovation”?
Revolutionary breakthroughs are not what La Source is after. What it seeks, instead, is to apply in a novel way or to integrate solutions never before implemented in a given form in specific settings.
These innovative solutions more often than not involve existing means that often have been tested in other contexts but never exploited in nursing care or nursing education.
2014: a major turning point
2014 marked a major turning point for innovation in nursing education. La Source furthered its reputation as a pioneer by:
- modelling and implementing a simulated hospital for training third-year BSN students;
- creating a simulated pharmacy for risk-free training in medication preparation. The packaging is real, but the drugs are all perfectly safe placebos;
- using serious games developed by Albasim (HEIG-VD) for nurse clinical assessment training;
- developing, in conjunction with students and in partnership with UbiSim (a start-up associated with the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), a virtual-reality pedagogical tool for blood transfusion training; and
- using auscultation and obesity simulators in the course of undergraduate and post-graduate education programmes (CAS in clinical assessment);
- developing a virtual pre-operative visit prototype in partnership with Clinique de La Source and Pixolabs (Shanghai). The prototype was nominated as a finalist in the 2017 Challenge Debiopharm–Inartis;
- launching several interprofessional courses (e.g., in practical clinical nutrition, emergency clinical assessment, risk management, management of people with hypertension) for medical and nursing students; and
- conducting a full-scale disaster drill involving over 180 persons (nursing students, medical students, simulated patients, first-aid workers, health professionals, firefighters, and police officers) to validate an interprofessional module.
The creation of SILAB in 2018
In 2018, all the conditions were in place to give this historic legacy a new dimension and really accelerate innovation!
La Source expanded, inaugurating its new premises at the Beaulieu site and creating the Source Innovation Lab (SILAB), managed by a new team under the supervision of a doctor.
And this is just the beginning …
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