UTPB and Midland Health on Tuesday announced enhancements to their partnership that includes upgrading the sim lab and inviting more people to use it.
With the donation of $1 million over seven years from Midland Health, UTPB will be able to renovate and upgrade the sim lab. In place since 2013, the sim lab will now be called the Midland Health Simulation and Learning Resource Center.
The announcement, which featured officials from UTPB and Midland Memorial, was held in the sim lab at the Mesa Building.
Midland Memorial Hospital Chief Nursing Officer Dr. Kit Bredimus said Tuesday’s announcement is a great collaboration between Midland Health and UTPB.
“We are very excited to partner with UTPB and have the ability to operate in this Simulation Resource Center. This will give an opportunity, not only for students to have very high-fidelity simulation and learn on the newest techniques, but also allow our staff to come in and learn with new updates and medical technologies, procedures, devices. Now we have the opportunity to do that in a high-fidelity simulation environment,” Bredimus said.
In 2021, a nursing internship program with UTPB was announced. Bredimus said there are 67 first-semester students that they are working with. There are about 115 people in the residency program.
“That is our paid clinical academic practice partnership that allows fourth-semester intern students to be paid for their clinical hours. …,” Bredimus said.
The lab also will enable students and staff work together in a clinical and simulation setting.
“The financial gift from Midland Health is to help upgrade the facilities, to help produce higher simulation mannequins, to produce a very state -of- the-art simulation program, so that way we are better able to simulate what they would encounter in the real world,” he added.
In addition to the mannequins, a new state-of-the-art simulation system will be added with up to date audio visual equipment that can produce high-fidelity simulations.
“… One of the major benefits of simulation is that after you’re done, you can go back and watch film and watch it from a couple of different angles to see what you can do to improve care …,” Bredimus said.
He added that Midland Memorial currently has staff that uses the Simulation and Learning Resource Center.
“(We) had our first cohort back in July and that was really great practice to come out, kind of get a feel for everything. We work closely with UTPB staff to make sure that we have some appropriate times, appropriate simulations, and then we also open it up to students as well. So you will have nurses from the bedside working with students and vice-versa,” Bredimus said.
UTPB President Sandra Woodley said they are thrilled to have the opportunity for an updated sim center and expanded partnership. She added that the new updated simulation equipment will give students a deeper understanding of what they will face when they get into the real health care world.
“That continuing opportunity to provide professional development for not only our nurses, but for the nurses in our community is a gift that I think will keep on giving to our community,” Woodley said.
She added that they will be working over the next five or 10 years to develop “lots of programs in health care, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy.”
These are some of the areas where Woodley said UTPB can make a difference in the community.
“… We’re also looking at a nurse practitioner in psychiatric care. We know that there will be a behavioral health center that will happen soon. Part of the funding is already there for that. University of Texas Permian Basin wants to be right there to develop the nurses, the social workers, the therapists that will be needed in that facility and beyond that facility, as well,” Woodley said.
She added that they are not part of the discussed Academic Medical Campus, but UTPB’s part is making sure the workforce is available for the entire healthcare system, the current hospitals and anything that comes in the future.
“Our role is to develop the graduates and to train the graduates. I think with the simulation center that we’re talking about here today, we have an opportunity to continue our education (of) professional nurses and other practitioners in the field,” Woodley said.
She added that they received almost $11 million from Permian Strategic Partnerships “to really stoke that pipeline” for nurses, health care workers and pre-med students in conjunction with Texas Tech Health Science Center.
“We have a wonderful partnership in the community and with our other educational partners to make sure that we ramp up all of our programs. We have record numbers of applicants and students in nursing and in our health care area. It’s just amazing what we’re seeing. I think the growth in that particular area is really heartwarming to me because there’s such a need in our community. We have new recruiters; we have new advisors; we have new scholarships; we have marketing dollars that we’ve never had before, thanks to our partnerships, to be able to go out and convince students that this is a really great field to go into,” Woodley said.
Director of Strategic Communications Alexa Dunson said students can now say they are nursing intended from their freshman year so they can start getting an idea of if the field is right for them. There are more than 100 students who have taken this opportunity.
Eventually, Woodley said the hope is to have a standalone health science facility near the College of Engineering.
“We’ve requested from the legislature a $175 million Health Science Complex that will be out near the Engineering Building. If that’s granted then yes, we’ll have all of the expansion we need for all of the health science programs that we talked about just a moment ago,” Woodley said.
Nursing student Reese Delfeld said the sim lab has been one of the more important parts of her her time in nursing school so far. She said she loves that it is so interactive.
“We get a very hands-on approach to learning about nursing. … I’m a very tactile learner. … When you work with your hands, you learn better and we get to do so many different skills that I apply at the hospital, especially in our first semester. I learned most of what I do now at the hospital as a nursing student from the sim lab. It’s amazing,” Delfeld said.
She works at Medical Center and Midland Memorial hospitals.
“They teach us so much and I get to learn a lot and see a lot,” Delfeld said.
She added that she hopes they make the sim lab improvements before she graduates.
“… I think that’s amazing, especially for the new students coming in. They’ll get more experience and things to learn and they’ll just get a bunch of new facilities. I think that’s really cool that they have more to work with,” Delfeld said.
