Is VR the Future of Nurse Education and Training?
A Panel Review

Dr. Sarah Friend has over a decade of experience in healthcare. She started as a nurse tech in the float pool while in nursing school at Virginia Commonwealth University. She graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2012. After graduation, she worked in a Level-1 Burn Center at VCU Health System and completed her nurse residency program. In 2014, she moved to Seattle, Washington to attend the University of Washington's Doctorate of Nursing Practice program in the family track. For her doctoral project, she created an online evidence-based learning module for primary care providers in regards to affirming care for transgender and gender non-conforming patients for a large healthcare system. Upon graduating in 2017, she started working in a community retail clinic with Kaiser Permanente. In addition to her clinical work, she precepted nurse practitioner (NP) students and worked as adjunct clinical faculty at UW teaching a health assessment course for the DNP program from which she graduated. In 2020, Sarah was deployed to assist with the COVID-19 response by working at local drive-up sites and nursing homes for testing, doing telehealth visits, and later joining the research team at the Kaiser Permanente Research Facility where she worked on the Moderna Phase 3 clinical trial for the COVID-19 vaccine.Sarah started working in women's health and also joined as adjunct faculty at VCU in the fall of 2022, teaching a health assessment course for NP students.

Lance W. Baily, BA, EMT-B is the Founder / CEO of HealthySimulation.com, the world’s leading medical simulation resource website which supports thousands healthcare professionals a month. As an experienced entrepreneur, digital media producer and administrative professional, Lance has the background and the experience necessary to help guide the healthcare simulation industry to greater levels of adoption.

Lance is also the Founder of SimGHOSTS.org, the leading 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to supporting healthcare professionals operating clinical simulation technologies which has organized over twenty hands-on training conferences around the globe since 2011. His new co-edited Book: “Comprehensive Healthcare Simulation: Operations, Technology, and Innovative Practice” provides 400 pages of in-depth articles supporting the technical integration of healthcare simulation in any sized program.

Formerly he served as Director of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas, Simulation Technician for the LA Community College District, and volunteer Fire-Fighter, after receiving his BA in Film and Digital Media Production and working on Hollywood production sets. He currently lives with his wife in Las Vegas with their two young daughters and two crazy dachshunds.