The School of Nursing and Health Studies will be one of the nation’s first education-based institutions to house a Simulation Hospital.
“The idea is that you simulate the flow of healthcare,” said Nilda Peragallo Montano, dean of the nursing school.
The school received $3.2 million in donations toward the building of a Simulation Hospital, and created the R. Kirk Landon Challenge that will match all leadership gifts of $50,000 or more, up to $1 million toward the construction of the Simulation Hospital.
An unnamed benefactor also gifted $500,000 toward the hospital. This gift will support the naming of the simulation hospital courtyard.
The five-story, 39,000-square-foot Simulation Hospital will cost $16 million with construction beginning in two years, Peragallo Montano said. The nursing school plans to match $5 million.
As Peragallo Montano mentioned, the Simulation Hospital will allow nursing students to practice their skills before beginning their clinical trials which take place during the last two years of a standard, four-year nursing program.
Nursing students will be able to practice with standardized patient actors and simulators. The Simulation Hospital will not take the place of the two-year clinical sequence because only 25 percent of a nurse’s training can be simulated, according to the Florida Board of Nursing.
The Simulation Hospital will also expose nurses to cases that may not be available at certain clinical sites. The nursing school places its students in more than 170 sites throughout South Florida, including the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami Hospital (UMH) and Jackson Memorial Hospital.
“It’s better to go to a real-life scenario when you’ve prepared for that,” Peragallo Montano said.
The nursing school currently has a 5,500-square-foot simulation center that features a three-bed simulation suite, a seven-bed adult laboratory and not limited to a seven-bed pediatric laboratory. The center also replicates intensive care units, and patient-simulators represent a range of ages and ethnic groups.
Senior Ally Avovani, a nursing student in her third semester of clincals, found that simulation prepared her for her real-world practice at UMH and Jackson.
“The simulations prepare you even though you use dummies,” she said.
The full-body assessments on these dummies were helpful during her transition to real-world hospitals, she said.
“In nursing, it’s easy to compartmentalize,” Avovani said. “In full-body assessments, you put everything together.”