A Pulse on Nursing

Assistant professor Shannon Ford and clinical assistant professor Jaqueline Vaughn, both at UNCW’s School of Nursing, are collaborators on the PULSE project.

SHANNON FORD, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s School of Nursing, recently won second place in the 2025 Women-in-Tech Idea Test Lab Cohort.  

Ford, with her team, developed the Platform for Unified Learning and Simulation Excellence (PULSE). PULSE uses AI and simulation to enhance nursing faculty’s professional development and to expand student nurses’ clinical experience. It also includes an analytical program for nurses to ensure they are providing holistic patient care. 

“Our goal was to build a platform that would optimize good nurse education,” Ford says of PULSE. 

Ford explains that PULSE is composed of three separate applications: SimU helps nursing faculty create high-quality simulations for students; Proactive helps student nurses engage effectively with patients so they can perform in-depth clinical assessments and develop comprehensive care plans; and Insights, the analytical part of the platform, provides data that is based on national gold standards for nursing care. 

The program offers multiple benefits, according to Ford. On a national level, PULSE overcomes challenges in nursing education like limited access to trained facilitators and inconsistent nurse training. It is also cost-effective as nurse interview evaluations will cost much less per case, Ford explains.   

PULSE provides learning opportunities for individuals as well. For example, students receive objective feedback on how they engage with a range of diverse patients. They then use this information to practice and refine their communication and clinical skills.  

And, with PULSE’s national health data at their fingertips, nurses can develop inclusive treatment plans, instead of siloing patient care, Ford says. 

“We want nurses to think in ways that provide a whole different level of clinical and critical reasoning around biological, psychological, and social patient care,” she says.  

Things are moving fast for PULSE. Ford says her team has already performed pilot studies on SimU and Insight, and pilot studies on Proactive are being prepared. The rollout of the Proactive pilot into the psych-mental health nurse practitioner program is scheduled for January, and Ford will soon complete the integration of the program into Canvas, UNCW’s learning program.  

PULSE may just be getting off the ground, but Ford has big plans for the platform. One is to get PULSE into rural hospitals. Another is to use the PULSE prototype to help specific groups. In fact, Ford has put in an application to use PULSE with families of children with disabilities. The program will help them learn how to better navigate their child’s Individualized Education Program meetings. 

The promise of PULSE hasn’t gone unnoticed. Universities across the U.S. and Canada are interested in the program, and Ford is working with the National League for Nursing to give continuing education credits to faculty members who participate in PULSE, she says.  

PULSE has also garnered some financial backing. In addition to the IDEA Test Lab’s $3,000 award, Ford has won grants from UNCW’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, UNCW’s Office of Innovation and Commercialization, and a UNCW Corbett grant.  

Ford hopes to obtain a grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, as it will help PULSE move forward faster, but she says PULSE will continue regardless. 

One reason Ford is so certain that PULSE will survive is the dedication of the people involved with it. Each member of Ford’s professional team, which includes JACQUELINE VAUGHN, GULUSTAN DOGAN, and YI LIU, contributes their work; and several students, who receive only a small stipend, also give their time and talent to PULSE. Ford says some students are so tied to the project that they continue to work on PULSE after they have graduated.   

For Ford, PULSE is the continuation of a lifelong passion for helping others. As the child of parents who took in foster children, Ford became aware of the many factors affecting people’s health. This led to her belief in comprehensive patient care. Ford’s interest in technology came about when she taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s simulation center. Ford also, under the leadership of ROBERT CHRISTIAN, built a platform for UNC’s Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities to support improved patient care outcomes. Today, Ford continues to see patients while teaching and bringing PULSE to life at UNCW. 

“No matter what we’ll do it,” Ford says of moving the program forward. “PULSE may be smaller if we don’t get funds, but it’s going to happen.” 

To view more of photographer Madeline Gray’s work, go to madelinegrayphoto.com.

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