The Collaborative Healthcare Simulation and Learning Center in downtown Rochester will be used to train students in a mock hospital room, a mock doctor’s office or through virtual reality scenarios.
ROCHESTER — A learning space for the Rochester area’s budding nurses, EMTs and other health care professionals is up and running.
„It’s ready right now,“ said Catherine Davis, interim executive director for Greater Rochester Advocates for Universities & Colleges. „We’re working with our education partners to get people scheduled to come in and to start using it.“
GRAUC´s Collaboration Healthcare Simulation and Learning Center, located in the Massey Building at 16 Second St. SW, can be used by area colleges, universities and medical providers to train students, Davis said.
„Especially with Bold. Forward. Unbound. and the growth that’s happening at OMC and the skilled nursing facilities — there’s a need,“ Davis said. „Some need for trained health care workers.“
Three different rooms in the center are dedicated to health care simulations. In one, a hospital bed and fake wall-mounted oxygen and air supply outlets make up a mock hospital room. Another features a patient exam table, like in a doctor’s office.
„We’re going to have virtual reality, and then we’re also going to have standardized participants, AKA actors, who can come in and do different simulations,“ said Katie Snow, Olmsted Medical Center’s chief nursing officer and a Simulation Center board member. „I think we’re going to have between 12 and 16 simulations that people can choose from.“
The third room is mostly empty. There, students can participate in virtual reality scenarios while wearing VR headsets. Davis said the VR space can be used to simulate medical events that happen infrequently enough that a student might not get to see it in person during clinical rounds.
„For example, we have an obstetric virtual simulation,“ Davis said. „The other software that we’re in the process of getting, as well, is specifically related to delirium, so the learner gets to work with someone who has delirium, but then they also get to see what it’s like to have delirium.“
Four small, mobile tablets provide live video feeds from those rooms so that instructors can watch their pupils without actually being in the simulation. Students can also play back the recording of their simulation to see how they did.
„We’ve got the cameras in there so we can watch it without having to be right on top of the students,“ said Lori Rhudy, chief nurse administrator at Winona State University and a co-chair of the Simulation Center’s board of directors.
There’s also a conference room where teachers and students can debrief what happened in their simulation.
The Simulation Center is more than five years in the making.
„January 2020, Winona State came to me and said, ‚Would GRAUC do this? Would you spearhead a collaborative?'“ said Julie Nigon, GRAUC’s former executive director.
Soon, other institutions — Mayo Clinic, University of Minnesota Rochester, Saint Mary’s University and more — joined the effort. After years of lobbying for funding at the Minnesota Capitol and dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, GRAUC secured $475,000 for its simulation center.
„This whole time leading up to this, we’ve done needs analysis, worked with our partners, worked with out legislators in order to get funding,“ Davis said.
The newly opened center is considered a prototype — GRAUC wants to ultimately expand the Simulation Center into a 10,000-square-foot learning space, as previously reported by the Post Bulletin.
Quelle:
Foto: Community members learn how to use the virtual reality simulator during Greater Rochester Advocates for Universities & Colleges open house for their new Collaborative Healthcare Learning & Simulation Center on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025, in downtown Rochester.Maya Giron / Post Bulletin
