Healthy Living on the Move
davidson county community college, education, health care, technology,
A unique traveling lab is allowing Davidson County Community College to stretch its health-care education resources further while reaching more people than ever before.
The rolling facility, better known as the Mobile Medical Simulation Lab, was born out of necessity. The college’s health technology department had received grant funds and purchased patient simulators, but they came up short in terms of physical space to house them.
“Our president indicated that there wouldn’t be any place on campus to dedicate to a permanent simulation lab and suggested that we consider a mobile unit,” says Jeannine Woody, associate dean for health technology. “We began looking at some funding to go in that direction, and received some through the WIRED initiative, enough to purchase the trailer.”
From that point on, things snowballed. A biology instructor won a small pickup truck, and a trade-up to a larger model gave the trailer mobility. Additional funds were secured to properly outfit it, and the completed mobile lab made its local debut in April 2008.
With the ability to simulate heart attacks, labor and delivery, and other critical situations where care has to be immediate and on-site, the lab already is proving to have multiple uses. And from curriculum instruction and continuing education to appearances at career fairs and overall local outreach, it’s already putting on the miles.
“Now we can provide learning experiences for our students that you just can’t guarantee otherwise,” Woody says. “People may be in our nursing program for the entire two years and never see a person experiencing a heart attack or a stroke, or a person actually having a pulmonary embolism. You can’t just schedule those opportunities. We can create them in the lab, though, so that situations requiring immediate knowledge can be practiced. And if they make a mistake, they learn from it and no one is hurt.”
In addition to nursing students, emergency medical services personnel will use the simulator, as will local hospital staff and other medical personnel who need to stay on top of training requirements.
“It’s going to let us assist our health-care facilities around here, because we can help their employees maintain their competencies and also train on new equipment,” Woody says.
The mobile unit is fully outfitted with its own generators, running water and oxygen tank. It can also serve as a field hospital in case of a natural disaster or other major emergency, but Woody says she hopes that its field operations are of a much less perilous nature.
“We look forward to taking it to schools, showing it to students who are interested in health-care careers,” she says. “We can talk to them about what kind of courses to take while they’re in high school, and that will help them prepare early to be successful in these careers. It really is gong to see a lot of use, both here and out in the community.”
Story by Joe Morris
Photo by Ian Curcio
