islandpacket.com - The Island Packet Online

• Archive Search

Search Everything in the Lowcountry and the Coastal Empire.

USCB moves forward on expanding nursing program

Comment on this | | | | | | | |

Construction continues on the new nursing wing on Bluffton's campus of the University of South Carolina Beaufort, with plans for it to open in time for the spring semester.

On the second floor of the Science and Technology building, the wing will house USCB's first class of students in the bachelor of science in nursing program. The program was developed to help fill local nursing positions.

The school also intends to offer the facility as a training space for local fire and rescue crews, the Red Cross, hospitals and other community groups.

The 21,500-square-foot project costs $2.2 million and includes a virtual hospital, classrooms, offices and a student lounge.

The wing is scheduled to be finished next month and open in January.

So far, the school has raised about $1.7 million of the cost of the project. The rest of the money it is trying to raise will go toward high-tech training equipment.

Susan Williams, nursing department chair, said if the school raises more than its goal of $2.2 million, it could buy additional training equipment for the virtual hospital's simulation lab, which consists of eight hospital beds and two intensive care units separated by an observation room.

The school plans to purchase mannequins used for patient care simulation so students can practice taking blood pressure, listening to heart and lung sounds or inserting needles. High-tech simulators, which the school hopes to purchase, are more expensive and offer students experience in difficult and uncommon cases.

SimMan, for example, can talk, breathe, blink, bleed, urinate and have a heart attack all at once, if necessary. It costs $65,000 and can simulate any medical emergency, once programmed by instructors. It's on the school's "wish list," as are geriatric mannequins to practice home care and baby mannequins to practice neonatal care.

The technology gives students real world technical skills without harming patients, Williams said.

"You can simulate a drug reaction if a student gives the patient too much or the wrong kind (of drug)," she said. "You want to catch it in a lab setting, film it and play it back so students can see where they made mistakes in a controlled setting."

Williams said she'd also like to obtain a birthing simulator, which can give students the delivery experience they might not get on an eight-hour rotation with an obstetrician.

The technology, called Noelle, is a pregnant robot that can be programmed for any kind of labor and delivery complication. It is used in the simulation lab at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

Nancy Duffy, director of undergraduate programs in MUSC's college of nursing, said the robot can simulate a variety of medical conditions to give students practical experience.

"She delivers a baby, and this can be a normal healthy baby or I can program it to turn blue or cry," Duffy said. "It's phenomenal what you can do down in that lab. There is not a clinical scenario that I can't design for a student who is in nursing school."

HOW TO HELP

• The University of South Carolina Beaufort is seeking donations for its nursing wing on the Bluffton campus. Call Colleen Callahan at 843-208-8258 to make a contribution.

| | | | | | |