Pharmacy simulation education jumps to the next level

Pharmacy simulation education jumps to the next level

Since 2023, Sarah Uroza has been part of an innovative group of faculty working to make sure health science faculty maximize new technology as a valuable learning tool.

By Janel Shoun-Smith | 615-335-6273 | 06/08/2026

With the advent of AI and an ever-changing healthcare system, the world of health science simulation for student learning is changing fast.

Since 2023, Dr. Sarah Uroza, associate professor, has been part of an innovative group of faculty working to make sure health science faculty at Vanderbilt University and Lipscomb can keep up and maximize such a valuable learning tool.

The project, recently completed, was funded by the federal government's Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and was awarded to the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. The Vanderbilt School of Medicine, Vanderbilt School of Divinity and Lipscomb's College of Pharmacy all partnered in the effort.

For three years Uroza and the Vanderbilt partners have coordinated three-day workshops to educate faculty, including four Lipscomb pharmacy faculty, about simulations and help them develop their own simulation, as well as developing webinars for students on issues like geriatric health, trauma-informed care, overdose awareness and the varying roles of a healthcare team.

Uroza walked away from the partnership with new knowledge of impactful resources to provide experiential learning opportunities for Lipscomb's pharmacy students, including a platform called Recourse that she has begun using in her medication therapy management class.

Recourse works with university faculty to create an AI-powered avatar, Uroza's is called Amy Ponder, that meets the instructor's specific criteria for a patient case study. The instructor can outline factors such as gender, age, health conditions, medications, substance use, living situations, family resources and access to urgent health care, among other factors.

Previously, Uoroza had her students interview family members as a case study in the course, but that approach means every student is getting a different patient experience. The college has also hired standardized patients, actors who portray a patient with certain conditions, but that approach takes a great deal of resources, said Uroza.

Recourse allows all students in the class to get an equivalent simulation experience while using less financial resources, as the avatar gets created once and can be used over and over again, said Uroza.

"Formative assessments like simulations are often more time-consuming for faculty to give students consistent, immediate feedback, but formative simulations are often the better teaching tool," she said. "Much of the work this grant funded was researching, developing and educating about how to make that feedback process more consistent and easier for faculty, so that the formative learning experiences could be scaled up to meet the needs of many students at one time."