Anne Caputo, MSN, MA, BSN

“Care of the Psychiatric Patient” (NURS235), for example, includes a simulation during which students listen to a recording of what a patient who hears voices would hear. While listening to the recording, the students perform a variety of activities, including giving a medical history, playing cards, and recounting the events of the last 24 hours. Students learn how distracting the voices can be and empathize with how difficult it is for patients with auditory hallucinations  to concentrate on tasks.  

In other simulations, actors serving as standardized patients portray one of four psychiatric disorders, allowing students to hone their therapeutic communication skills. During the de-briefing, students receive feedback from their instructor and a peer evaluator. The session ends with the student viewing the videotape of the session and writing a reflective paper. 

Starting in the freshman year, students at Penn Nursing learn to manage patient information using electronic health records (EHRs). As a member of Penn Nursing’s Electronic Health Records in Academia Task Force, Ms. Caputo helps ensure that students are comfortable using EHRs, and that they learn how to use the system during patient visits and to develop good documentation. The task force is also working to integrate EHRs in more courses. 

Before joining the faculty of Penn Nursing, Ms. Caputo was a nursing administrator and a nurse at Washington Hospital Center, Hahnemann Hospital, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and Graduate Hospital, most recently as director of the Graduate Pain Center. She also transported pre-hospital and critically ill patients as a flight nurse for the PennStar and University MedEvac Flight Programs. 

As a graduate of Penn Nursing’s master’s program in health leadership, Ms. Caputo understands the importance of leadership skills for nurses. Simulations in “Senior Leadership” (NURS390) include caring for rapidly deteriorating patients, ECG interpretation and complex, real-time simulations focused on teamwork, delegation, and communication.  Students must prioritize, delegate and work as a team in order to deliver quality patient care in a timely fashion.  Ms. Caputo also helps develop simulations for graduate students in the nurse practitioner and nurse anesthetist programs.

• Simulation faculty member, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Pediatric Critical Care Boot Camp  
• Faculty facilitator, Exploring Inter-professional Healthcare Teams, University of Pennsylvania and University of the Sciences  
• Member, Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society  
• Member, International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning  
• Member, Undergraduate and Graduate Simulation Task Forces, Penn Nursing