Nursing Simulation Laboratories

$2,500,000

New, state-of-the-art, self-contained, high-fidelity Nursing Simulation Laboratories will support Nursing clinical training and prepare our Nursing students for practicum placements in clinical settings.

Nursing education is changing fast. Changes in medical care are a driving force. Hospital stays get shorter, in-patients sicker, and hospitals are more understaffed. Students need more and more realistically-simulated, hands-on training to be well prepared for the rigors of clinical sites.

The Mount’s Nursing faculty are at the lead of advancing pedagogy. Nursing care now routinely employs so much technology that University facilities must become more extensive and more sophisticated. The mix is quite extraordinary. Low-tech simulation matters as much as ever. Live actors perform to help students develop a range of skills in patient care. High-tech simulation is ever more demanding. Life-like robotic simulators can be programmed with a range of symptoms and illnesses. Students can be sent into a room and faced with symptoms of an uncommunicative patient they must diagnose quickly. Simulators give birth, they may need to be intubated, they go into A-fib. They are also expensive (costing $80,000+ apiece) and require a dedicated infrastructure.

New $2.5 million Nursing Simulation Laboratories will help keep Mount Saint Vincent’s Nursing program among the best in the region. The Laboratories will be located on the ground level of a new residential hall that will help accommodate a growing student body.