Continue the conversation with Part II of our series on teaching the acute care setting in the classroom. In this session, we will take a closer look at the Acute Care and Assistive Devices simulations and explore practical ways to incorporate e-learning activities that reinforce key concepts for students.

Dr. Tracy Moore will also provide a brief overview of the PhysioU Educator Dashboard, highlighting how instructors can easily assign activities and track student progress across simulations and modules.

Discover how combining simulations, e-learning, and progress tracking can help reinforce clinical reasoning and better prepare students for the complexities of inpatient practice.

Featured Speaker: Tracy Moore, PT, DPT, ONC 

Dr. Moore is a physical therapist, faculty member, product manager and educational leader. He completed his Doctorate in Physical Therapy at Azusa Pacific University and later received the Oncology Clinical Specialist certification from the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties. Following a residency at City of Hope National Medical Center, Dr. Moore began his academic career teaching subjects such as oncology, clinical skills, differential diagnosis, and acute care. He is an active speaker at national and international conferences, specializing in oncology rehabilitation, chronic pain, and learning science. Dr. Moore continues to conduct and publish research, present at industry conferences, and contribute to PhysioU app design and development. His approach uniquely bridges the gap between the student experience, clinical expertise, and learning science in order to help faculty and students revolutionize healthcare education in their own classrooms around the world.

00:00 Assistive Device Teaching Webinar

04:31 Acute Care Simulation Challenges

10:05 Medical Simulation Platform Demonstration

12:03 Medical Simulation Tool Demonstration

14:44 Learning Materials Development Discussion

17:21 ICU Simulation Program Development

21:18 PhysioU Simulations Implementation Discussion

Helpful Links: Complimentary Educator access | Educator resources | Set up a Demo

Bringing the Acute Care Environment to Life: How Simulation is Transforming Clinical Education

There’s a particular moment that happens in every physical therapy program—usually somewhere in the middle of the curriculum—when students begin to realize just how different the acute care environment is from everything they’ve studied so far. The complexity hits them all at once: the lines, the tubes, the monitors, the precautions, the sheer vulnerability of the patients they’ll be working with.

We’ve seen it play out year after year in our own classrooms at Azusa Pacific University, and we hear the same story from faculty members across the country. Students arrive at their first ICU clinical rotation wide-eyed, overwhelmed by how much there is to process before they can even begin thinking about therapeutic intervention. The classroom lecture on chest tubes is one thing. Standing in an actual ICU room, trying to manage multiple lines while preparing a critically ill patient for mobilization, is something else entirely.

That gap between classroom knowledge and clinical reality is exactly what drove us to develop the acute care simulation suite at PhysioU. In a recent faculty webinar session, we explored how digital simulation is helping to bridge that divide—giving students meaningful exposure to the acute care setting before they ever set foot in a hospital.

The Challenge of Teaching Acute Care Skills

Let’s be honest about the obstacles we face as educators in this space. High-fidelity mannequins with realistic auscultation capabilities can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Even when programs can afford them, student access is often limited to supervised lab hours. Outside of those scheduled sessions, students have few opportunities to practice the recognition and recall skills that form the foundation of acute care competency.

Then there’s the suspension of disbelief problem. When your “patient” is actually your healthy, athletic classmate pretending to have COPD, it’s genuinely difficult for students to make the cognitive leap to real clinical reasoning. They struggle to connect textbook knowledge with what they’re seeing—or rather, what they’re trying to see—in front of them. These aren’t small challenges. They’re fundamental limitations that affect how well we can prepare students for one of the most demanding clinical environments they’ll encounter.

Building Realistic Context Without the Price Tag

Our approach with the acute care simulations was to create layered learning experiences that progressively build competence. We started with what we call “learning boosts”—short, focused activities that target basic recognition and recall. Think medical terminology, common abbreviations, types of bracing, precautions specific to the acute care setting. These are the building blocks students need to have before they can tackle more complex clinical reasoning.

The beauty of these MicroLearning modules is that they’re low-stakes and infinitely repeatable. Students can work through them before class to prime their thinking, or use them for retrieval practice after a lecture. If they don’t pass on the first attempt, they simply play again. There’s no penalty, no grade anxiety—just focused practice until the material sticks.

From there, we move into patient-based case scenarios through our MiniSIMs. These are more substantial experiences, taking students through realistic chart reviews using simulated EMRs, environmental assessments of ICU rooms, and clinical decision-making points where they have to synthesize multiple pieces of information.

One scenario walks students through an ICU case where they need to review a patient’s blood pressure readings and current medications, including midodrine, before deciding what to ask the nursing staff. If they jump straight to questions about blood pressure trends without first checking what’s already documented in the chart, they get immediate feedback: Check the notes first. When you need clarification, that’s when you reach out to your interprofessional partners. It’s a small moment, but it teaches something crucial about workflow and professional communication in the acute care setting.

The Details That Make It Real

What we’ve heard consistently from faculty using these simulations is that the details matter enormously. When students click through an ICU room environment and can identify the ventilator, the chest tube, the IV poles, the monitoring equipment—when they can see what these things actually look like in context—something clicks.

We include videos throughout that show therapists setting up the environment for treatment, managing lines, preparing for transfers. Because here’s something students consistently underestimate: how long everything takes in the ICU. They imagine they’ll walk in, quickly organize the lines, and get straight to mobilization. The reality, as anyone who’s practiced in this setting knows, is that line management and environmental setup can take several minutes. And that time isn’t wasted—it’s essential. You’re not just organizing equipment; you’re ensuring patient safety and setting yourself up for success. When you’re going to mobilize a critically ill patient, you don’t get multiple attempts to get it right. You need to be smooth and prepared from the start.

Making Assessment Seamless for Educators

We built these simulations with our own teaching workflows in mind. Every activity generates a learning report that students can download and submit directly to their LMS. It shows their score history, time spent, number of attempts, and links back to verify completion.

For programs that want deeper integration, our Educator Dashboard provides a centralized gradebook where faculty can view all student activity at a glance—either by individual simulation or by student roster. It takes about 30 seconds to scan through and confirm everyone completed their assigned work. If someone hasn’t, you know immediately and can follow up.

The system isn’t about creating more grading work for faculty. It’s about creating accountability for students while maintaining the low-stakes learning environment these simulations are designed to provide. Most instructors using our platform grade on a simple pass/fail basis—if you complete it and pass, you get the points. The goal is engagement with the material, not perfect scores on the first try.

Beyond the ICU: Assistive Devices and Diagnostic Imaging

The acute care suite extends beyond critical care scenarios. We’ve built parallel simulation sets for assistive device training—covering proper adjustments, bed mobility, gait patterns, guarding techniques, and wheelchair fitting. Students can review videos of transfers, check their understanding of weight-bearing precautions, and practice clinical decision-making before they ever put hands on equipment in lab.

We also developed diagnostic imaging simulations in partnership with JOSPT, based on published clinical cases. These cover the fundamentals of radiology and then progress into body region-specific case analysis. For many programs, imaging education fits naturally into the acute care curriculum, and having these resources available creates another layer of realistic clinical context.

The Bigger Picture

What we’re really talking about here is solving a persistent problem in healthcare education: how do you give students enough meaningful exposure to complex clinical environments before they’re actually responsible for patient care?

Simulation isn’t new. Healthcare programs across disciplines have been using it for years. But making simulation accessible, affordable, and genuinely useful for everyday teaching—that’s the challenge we’ve been working to solve.

Every element we’ve built into PhysioU comes from our own experience in the classroom and from conversations with faculty members navigating the same challenges we face. We’re all trying to prepare students for clinical practice in an era of shortened clinical rotations, increasing complexity, and higher expectations for entry-level competence.

The feedback we consistently hear is that students arrive at acute care rotations more confident and better prepared when they’ve worked through these simulations beforehand. They recognize equipment. They understand precautions. They’ve already thought through the clinical reasoning they’ll need to apply. That’s the goal—not to replace hands-on clinical education, but to lay a foundation that makes every clinical hour more productive and every learning opportunity more meaningful.

We’re continuing to expand these resources based on what we’re hearing from the faculty community. If there’s content you’re hoping to see, workflows you’re trying to improve, or implementation strategies you want to discuss, we’re here for those conversations. Because at the end of the day, we’re all faculty building tools for faculty—trying to do this challenging work a little bit better.