Sentinel U

Healthcare Simulations & Learning Innovations

Overview



Sentinel U® is a unique suite of virtual simulations that provides a perfect blend of insight into leadership, communication, patient management, and delegation. They are a leading provider of healthcare simulations and learning innovations for nursing students and healthcare professionals. Virtual simulations help streamline and enhance a curriculum, where critical thinking and nursing care scenarios for multiple modalities can be practiced repeatedly before learners venture into real-world settings. Sentinel U virtual simulations develop learners’ skills and understanding, fostering better patient outcomes, and they are cost-effective and convenient compared to traditional in-person clinicals and manikins.

With Sentinel U, learners can:

  • • Engage in realistic patient encounters across healthcare settings
  • • Sharpen clinical reasoning, decision-making and prioritization skills and critical thinking competencies
  • • Earn clinical hours
  • • Practice community and population health in a risk-free environment
  • • Access virtual simulations on-demand anywhere and anytime
  • • Get real-time feedback with rationales
  • • Boost confidence and learning outcomes
  • • Prepare for placement in new positions

Sentinel U simulations are effective in supporting clinicians in achieving the required competencies. Interactive learning experiences span areas such as pediatrics, gerontology, mental health, and community health applications.

Competencies and standards with which Sentinel U products align include:

  • • The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education
  • • QSEN Quality and Safety Competencies
  • • NLN Core Competencies
  • • Quad Council Core Competencies

Young female nursing student using Sentinel U on a computer
Sentinel U Product displayed on a laptop

Why Choose Sentinel U?

Sentinel U specializes in virtual simulations. Software features were born from student needs, and courses continue to grow to address updated competencies and new demands placed on clinicians. Patient interactions and clinical scenarios are regularly refreshed.

Research shows* simulation-based experiences expedite learning and professional advancement. Sentinel U staff understand what it’s like to teach and where pain points lie. Learners can rely on 24/7 support across all virtual clinicals, meeting their on-demand needs.

      *Effectiveness of virtual reality training in improving knowledge among nursing students: A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression, Nurse Education Today, Vol. 98, March 2021.

Sentinel U products offered by TDS Health include:

  • • Advanced Practice Series™
  • • Sentinel City® v.5, Sentinel Town®, and Sentinel City® Canada
  • • Nursing Quality Indicators®
  • • Interprofessional Teams®
  • • Telehealth™
  • • Family Support and Home Assessments®
  • • Patient Management and Delegation®
  • • Prioritization of Care®
  • • Professional Nursing Series™

Product Highlights




The virtual simulations from Sentinel U provide excellent training opportunities for RNs to enhance their skills or learn new areas of practice. From developing skills in nurse management and leadership courses, to Transition to Practice programs for newly licensed nurses, Sentinel U offers a variety of virtual simulations for organizations with a nurse residency who are looking for ways to further workforce development. Learners can earn 40 CEs.

Give your learners a standardized, realistic, and immersive virtual experience to stay current with practice trends, refine clinical judgment, and strengthen decision-making skills. Learners can earn 40 CEs. Learners will review patient information, inquiries, physical assessments, and updates for each of their patients individually within each section of the scenarios and will be challenged to provide a rationale for their clinical decisions for each of the five patients in 20 unique modules.

Sentinel U’s virtual scenarios were designed in direct collaboration with subject matter experts to include relevant healthcare concepts and principles that map directly to your organization’s objectives. With Sentinel U, your learners can:

  • • Engage in realistic patient encounters across healthcare settings
  • • Sharpen clinical reasoning, decision-making skills, and critical thinking competency
  • • Practice in a risk-free environment
  • • Boost confidence
  • • Get real-time feedback with rationales
  • • Access virtual simulations on-demand anywhere and anytime

All virtual nursing simulation programs are developed by nursing educators and aligned with specialty organization competencies such as the American Academy of Ambulatory Care Nurses, American Heart Association, Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Additionally, the Professional Nursing Series aligns with Magnet Model Components in Exemplary Professional Practice, Structural Empowerment, and Empirical Outcomes.

This nursing continuing professional development activity was approved by Connecticut Nurses’ Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

This virtual simulation series provides authentic virtual clinical encounters to prepare advanced practice learners such as nurse practitioner, physician assistant/associate, and medical students by refining clinical judgment and decision-making skills when developing diagnoses and plans of care. Each clinical area includes five patients with genuine scenarios created by advanced practice subject matter experts and exposes learners to ICD, CPT, and HCPCS coding for billing consideration.

The Advanced Practice Series features 11 modules with 55 patients. Fill gaps left by clinical preceptor demand and limited practice sites, and ensure your learners are exposed to commonly found encounters prior to facing them in a real-world environment. Other features include:

  • • Advance through the clinical encounter while reviewing the patient inquiry, H&P and review of systems (ROS) within the EHR
  • • Identify differential diagnoses and order corresponding diagnostics
  • • Develop a comprehensive plan of care
  • • Select appropriate billing codes
  • • Includes faculty guide, feedback and rationales, and a dashboard with evaluative report, as well as a learner dashboard

Academic Alignment:

  • • AACN Essentials for Advanced-Level Nursing Education
  • • ACGME Core Competencies for Medical Education
  • • National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties (NONPF) Role Specific Competencies
  • • Competencies for the PA Profession Adopted by AAPA, ARC-PA, NCCPA, and PAEA

Sentinel City® v.5, Sentinel Town®, and Sentinel City® Canada

Sentinel U started with two simulations: Sentinel City and Sentinel Town. These flagship products have been incorporated into countless Public Health Nursing or Community Health courses and have given learners keys to the city (or town) so they can explore, engage, and execute objectives in a risk-free environment. As one client said, “These resources really represent what we talk about in class, even better than the placements we have been able to provide.”

Virtual clinicals may be the wave of the future, but these innovative, fully immersive simulations have been around for years. Sentinel U’s experience is your gain. These virtual communities come with more than 50 complete assignments and grading rubrics, diverse characters, and elements of disaster preparedness and infection prevention control.

Sentinel City and Sentinel Town include a Faculty Resource Portal that includes a faculty guide, assignment catalog, and a dashboard guide, while the Student Resource Portal includes a quick start guide, video, and diagnosis and assessment forms.

  • • 23 Diverse Citizens + 4 Key Informants
  • • 100+ Sets of Unique and Authentic Data and Demographics
  • • Virtual Urban and Suburban Locations and Neighborhoods
  • • “Camera” and Notes Wizard for Recording Observations
  • • Fully Integrated Family Support and Home Assessment with Care Plan
  • • Searchable Assignment Catalog, Including 30+ Assignments with Grading Rubrics
  • • Admin Portal with Access to Activity Reports
  • • Detailed Faculty Guide with Operating Instructions and Teaching Suggestions

Family Support and Home Assessments

Learners immerse themselves in a home environment where they practice interview skills, identify potential environmental, health, and safety hazards, and build a care plan that they can support and rationalize. This provides them with the opportunity to practice psychosocial assessment and charting techniques before venturing into potentially risky environments. The situation that the learner encounters allow them to draw on their knowledge of OB, pediatrics, underserved populations, and more.

The goal for the learner in this scenario is to visit the home of a single mother, virtually tour the environment, and use their observations to build a care plan that will put all parties on a path to better physical and mental health. This scenario is applicable to pre-licensure (ADN and BSN), RN to BSN, and community or public health-related nursing programs. Typically, students earn 5-8 simulated clinical hours in this environment, and faculty members appreciate having a consistent base where they can evaluate their students. This scenario may be purchased independently or included with other simulation products.

Prioritization of Care Hospital

Learner’s practice clinical judgment and decision-making skills that relate to identifying and prioritizing patient care in this clinical scenario that offers a high volume and vast variety of patients. Each Prioritization of Care series gives learners access for 12 months. Patient assessment becomes progressively more difficult as learners work through the scenario.

Within Prioritization of Care, learners will record vital signs, interview patients, and chart the observations and rationale in SBAR format. Not only does this scenario allow learners to practice vital decision-making in a no-risk environment, but it also provides immediate remediation, badges for achievement, and a report that conveys totally correct responses. While Prioritization of Care works in a variety of training or classroom environments, in the past clients have most commonly added this to supplement teaching in Nursing Leadership and Management, Transition to Nursing Practice, and Capstone courses.

Nurses know that each day brings unexpected situations requiring quick thinking. The Prioritization of Care nursing scenarios helps students build decision-making confidence by working through progressively more difficult patient assessment and prioritization of care assignments. Students determine if a patient should go to an emergency room, urgent care, inpatient or outpatient mental health treatment, or pediatric specialty care.

Prioritization of Care online nursing scenarios feature 40 unique patients with symptoms ranging from early-stage heart failure and respiratory distress to orthopedic pain and depression. Students first record vital signs, interview, then chart observations and rationale in SBAR format. Students then prioritize patients for treatment. Remediation is immediately provided; success earns achievement badges and students learn at their own pace.

Prioritization of Care Clinic

Prioritization of Care online nursing scenarios feature 50 unique patients with symptoms ranging from early-stage heart failure and respiratory distress to orthopedic pain and depression. Students first record vital signs, interview, then chart observations and rationale in SBAR format. Students then prioritize patients for treatment. Remediation is immediately provided; success earns achievement badges and students learn at their own pace.

Based on popular demand, Prioritization of Care Clinic offers students more opportunities to practice their critical thinking and decision-making skills and earn 4-6 simulated clinical hours and practice experience. This Virtual Clinical Scenario features all the benefits of Prioritization of Care – with new, in-demand skill categories, settings, and achievement badges.

Prioritization of Care Specialty Care Series

In this safe, protected environment, learners practice vital tangible and intangible clinical judgment and decision-making skills that identify and prioritize patient care to select appropriate interventions. The learner selects appropriate interventions for ten patients within each module.

Learners record vital signs, interview patients, and chart the observations and rationale in SBAR format. Each module in the series provides immediate remediation and conveys total correct responses to help students build decision-making confidence by working through progressively more difficult patient assessment and prioritization assignments. Students then prioritize patients for treatment and select and prioritize the interventions for each patient.

Telehealth Series™

In these realistic virtual clinicals, the learner, in a hospital setting, conducts a virtual office visit with the remote patient, reviewing data and selecting telehealth tools to monitor specific parameters. In-depth dialog, and immediate feedback with rationales for correct and incorrect answers, immerse the learner in the telehealth visit. Each virtual clinical includes a faculty guide, feedback and rationales, a dashboard with an evaluative report, and a learner dashboard.

Telehealth Series provides long-distance clinical care and professional health education using electronic data and telecommunications technology (Health Resources and Services Administration) including videoconferencing (synchronous and asynchronous), remote patient monitoring, and mobile health (mHealth) to improve access to care, support quality patient-centered outcomes, and enhance efficiency in the healthcare system. By identifying the assessment skills required to use home-based telehealth devices, learners interpret alerts, developing the necessary clinical judgment and communication skills to assess, monitor, and evaluate the care of patients remotely. Four different clinical settings, each with three separate patients, begin with a pre-brief, addressing telehealth-related competencies such as nursing scope of practice and professional licensure requirements.

Interprofessional Teams

Sentinel U’s Interprofessional Teams virtual clinical series is designed specifically for healthcare leaders, practicing nurses, and nursing students who are sharpening their communication and collaboration skills. In the first module, the learner meets Jenny, a 9-year-old who is struggling in the fourth grade; in subsequent modules, the learner will watch Jenny’s case study unfold and will address her physical and psychosocial issues over multiple decades in her life. The learner will act as the lead nurse who assesses Jenny and conducts a patient inquiry session, honing therapeutic communication techniques. After identifying the patient’s needs, the learner will select five interprofessional team members, based on their scope of practice, to further manage and evaluate the patient. Next, the learner will observe the group collaboration process, recognize challenges and barriers within the team, and then guide the conversation by making decisions that result in positive impacts on the team and patient-centered care.

Nursing Quality Indicators

Learners will practice clinical judgment and decision-making skills that will impact the quality and safety of a healthcare organization. As learners evaluate ten patients, they will immediately see how their care decisions affect structure, outcome, process, and cost. The scenario provides background, an electronic medical record (EMR), test results and imaging for each patient; as learners make positive decisions, they will earn badges, but more importantly, they will build knowledge, skills, and confidence. At the end of the scenario, there is an automated report that displays the total number of correct responses for each person. Clients have included this scenario in Nursing Leadership and Management, Transition to Practice, Nursing Quality and Safety and Capstone courses. Most frequently, learners earn 3-6 virtual clinical hours within this scenario, and they have access to it for up to 12 months.

Patient Management and Delegation

In this scenario, learners will step into the shoes of a Charge Nurse and have to practice clinical judgment and decision-making skills related to setting acuities, scheduling, delegating, and prioritizing patient care. As learners work with each of the 56 patients through five levels that progress in complexity, they use “big picture” insight to assign these patients to nurses depending on the nurse’s experience, a record of efficiency, and overall caseload. Working from SBAR handoff reports and staff nurse details, learners will take on high levels of responsibility and learn to plan, coordinate, and evaluate nursing resources in an engaging environment that offers no risk to patients and staff but feels very real.

This scenario gives learners access for 12 months and permits more than one solution based on the mix of patients, nurses, and acuity; additionally, it comes with intuitive reporting to allow faculty or hospital coordinators to easily track activity. Most commonly, this scenario is utilized in Nursing Leadership and Management, Transition to Nursing Practice, and Capstone courses.


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