MONT ALTO, Pa. — One of the most important qualities a health care worker can have is the ability to empathize with the challenges their patients are facing. A simulated event held at Penn State Mont Alto on Nov. 4 aided students who are studying nursing, physical therapy, and occupational therapy as they seek to gain a greater recognition of exactly what those challenges are.
The Community Action Poverty Simulation was created in the 1970s to help groups of people, including college students, understand the issues people living below the poverty line face when it comes to issues like funding affordable childcare, accessing transportation and finding a permanent place to live.
Leslie Womeldorf, director of nursing education at Penn State Mont Alto, brought the exercise to the campus for the fifth year. During the simulation, students worked together in groups to role-play a month in the life of a family living in poverty.
Assigned "families" included one with a parent or multiple parents who must go to work and get their child to daycare, an elderly person who must find a way to pay their bills, and a young adult who is caring for their siblings while their parent is incarcerated.
Working together with their assigned families, students must use the community resources in the simulation to make ends meet.
“One of the main goals of this exercise is to help students recognize how professionals function as interdisciplinary teams to improve the health and socioeconomic outcomes for those facing poverty,” Womeldorf said.
The simulation helps students learn about barriers their future patients are dealing with, so they can better connect them to resources that can help.
"Healthcare is seen as a ‘splurge’ on spending for so many families living in poverty, so it is the duty of the nurse to make community resources available to the patient so they can better care and provide for their families,” Paige Powell, a fourth year student studying nursing at Penn State Mont Alto, reflected.
Students at Mont Alto started learning about the topics covered in the simulation through prework in an online Canvas course. The in-person simulated event was a way for students to develop a deeper understanding of the struggles they’ll be helping their future patients and clients navigate.
The Poverty Simulation website stresses the event is not a game, but a way for people to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. The identities the participants take on are based on real clients the Community Action organization has helped. Learn more about the simulation here.