jaw is still on the oor. They can really provide this curriculum quickly and ef ciently. I’m excited to see what’s going to happen going forward from here.” Drs. Salani and Valdes are equally eager to build the momentum SONHS has going. “Our goal is really getting out there and educating more providers to pick up the signs to recognize these individuals in clinical practice,” said Dr. Salani. In addition to nurses, they have begun to educate public health students, social workers, and medical students, among others. They now offer virtual simulations,
threatened with harm to their families, and forced to work in a health system without anyone outside the traf cking ring aware of their predicament. Statistics show that a majority of victims, in fact, are not getting help to escape traf cking when they visit the health care system. “These are dif cult patients when they come in. They have learned how to survive,” she said. “Raising awareness but not equipping nurses is just creating moral distress. We need to make sure systems are in place to help nurses respond. Nurses are the greatest health profession poised
with major hospital systems such as UHealth and Jackson Health System, engage a consultant, form an advisory board, and establish reproduceable resources for the local, national, and international community. Lamas’s support helped create The Maria G. Lamas Featured Speaker Series for Human Traf cking Education and Prevention Endowment. Nurse practitioner Jessica Peck, a nationally recognized anti-human traf cking advocate and clinical professor at Baylor University in Texas, was the inaugural presenter for the series.
Dr. Salani
Dr. Valdes
Dean Munro has championed this curriculum from the beginning, making human traf cking awareness a pillar of the school’s goals for Ever Brighter: The Campaign for Our Next Century. Her support enabled Drs. Salani and Valdes to hire the 10 SPs they needed to enact emergency department patient scenarios addressing the sex, labor, and domestic servitude aspects of human traf cking. “It’s not something you can read about,” said Dean Munro. “You have to practice it. Recognizing human traf cking should be a skill set just like the one we have when we see someone collapse. When that happens, we know how to perform CPR. We roll right into action.” The Dean’s vision and blueprint includes establishing the Academic Center for Human Traf cking Education and Prevention at SONHS. The center will provide a permanent incubator from which faculty and students can continue developing, disseminating, and scaling up evidence-
This was the stark subject of a Beta Tau educational presentation made by Dr. Salani and her colleague Dr. Beatriz Valdes, both associate professors of clinical at the School of Nursing and Health Studies (SONHS), during Human Traf cking Awareness Month in January. The title of their lecture, “Do You See What I See? Recognizing Human Traf cking,” is also the powerful hybrid of simulation and classroom instruction—the two rst piloted at the Simulation Hospital Advancing Research and Education (S.H.A.R.E.™) in 2019. “If we could educate more health care providers about this topic, more lives would be saved,” said Dr. Salani. name of the evidence-based educational curriculum—a Education is key in helping health care providers become more con dent, knowledgeable, and adept at identifying and assisting patients who may be human traf cking victims, according to scholarly projects conducted by two recent SONHS doctoral nursing students (see page 16). To that end, over 600 nursing students in a variety of degree programs at SONHS have completed the “Recognizing Human Traf cking” course since its of cial launch in Spring 2021. The simulation portion of the course requires students to engage unknowingly with a trauma-informed Standardized Patient (SP) portraying a potential traf cking victim. Simulation educators Michelle Arrojo, D.N.P. ’18, and Amauri Quintana,
D.N.P. ’20, run the scenarios that immerse students in complex encounters with varying indicators, challenges, and symptomatology. “The overall response has been excellent,” said Dr. Arrojo. “The students appreciate having the professional patients. They say it makes it more real.” Dr. Valdes agreed. “Some students are so into it that they walk out of the room to call 9-1-1,” she said. “They forget they are in a simulation.” At least two alumni spoke up during the Q&A portion of the lecture to say that what they learned in the course helped them identify a human traf cking victim during a subsequent clinical encounter. “The simulation and accompanying curriculum ensures that when our students are exposed to an event like this in the clinical arena, it won’t be their rst time,” said Dr. Quintana. “Many say they now feel more comfortable in what to do if they suspect someone is being traf cked or exploited.” Teaching providers to identify and responsibly assist human traf cking victims in culturally appropriate ways that don’t retraumatize or endanger them is part of a concerted mission under way at SONHS, led by Dean and Professor Cindy L. Munro, to make evidence-based tools and resources available to as many area health care professionals as possible.
“Human traf cking is one of the most egregious human rights violations there is,” said Dr. Peck during her November address. “This is happening in your back yard, in my back yard, all the time, all around us.” Emphasizing how shockingly commonplace the problem is, she said, “Sadly, it is easier to order a person than a pizza on the Internet.” Even health providers are not immune from being victimized. Dr. Peck shared the story of a group of nurses from the Philippines lured to another country with promise of work then abused, stripped of immigration papers,
too. “We train as many people as we can,” she said. “We want that number of unidenti ed traf cking victims to go down.” If you need help or suspect a case of human traf cking, call or share the Stop Human Traf cking hotline at 1-888-373- 7888.
for prevention—that’s what we do,” she continued. “But we have to be organized as a profession.” To help SONHS continue leading the way, Dr. Peck is sharing her expertise as a consultant and working with Dean Munro to assemble an advisory board. “The University of Miami has the ability to be an international leader in simulation-based learning,” Dr. Peck said. “What Dean Munro has proposed here with simulation is very innovative, immersive, and much more impactful for long-term behavioral change.”
based curricula and research to national and international levels.
Critical support to date has come from The Harcourt M. and Virginia W. Sylvester Foundation, Maria G. Lamas, Heidi Schaeffer, M.D. ’98, and the UM Citizens Board, among others. The generosity of the Harcourt M. and Virginia W. Sylvester Foundation, for example, will enable SONHS to signi cantly expand its efforts over the next two years to educate frontline health care professionals, collaborate
Mentioning her tour of S.H.A.R.E.™ earlier in the day, Dr. Peck added, “My
14 heart beat | SPRING 2023
SPRING 2023 | heart beat 15
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