Teaching Facilities

Classrooms

Two dedicated symposia rooms function as the main lecture rooms for the first- and second-year classes. In addition, the school shares two auditoria with the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. A range of biomedical seminar series are offered in these larger lecture rooms, along with the weekly wrap-up session from the school’s problem-based learning program.

Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) Rooms

The medical school houses 10 OSCE rooms, two of which are large enough to accommodate support team, group, and interdisciplinary training. The OSCE rooms are connected to a patient lounge with locker and restroom facilities, a waiting area, and an observation area that allows observers to perform real-time monitoring of activities.

Clinical Teaching Facilities

Most of the clinical training at the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine take place in Carilion Clinic facilities. Carilion Clinic’s resources, its inpatient and many outpatient sites, its proximity to the medical school, and the size and expertise of its faculty in clinical practice and education, create a vibrant clinical teaching environment.

Carilion Clinic provides a range of medical services and specialties at outpatient facilities and in hospitals throughout western Virginia. Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine students will train in an environment where advanced treatments, leading technologies, skilled specialists, and the setting of new standards in medicine and care are the norm.

Anatomage Table

One of the newest educational tools available to medical students is the Anatomage table, which is basically a giant tablet with virtual patients inside. Using this tool, students can explore and manipulate different layers of anatomy with the swipe of a finger. What’s more, the table can use real scans from actual cases that medical students encounter.

Wet Laboratories

The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, which shares 2 Riverside Circle with the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, has many state-of-the-art wet laboratories. From inventing new technologies that can image microscopic biological structures in their native liquid environments to exploring the system that propagates electrical signals through the heart, Fralin Biomedical Research Institute scientists conduct a range of research programs. And because medical students are required to conduct research as part of their studies, there are many opportunities for collaboration.

Virginia Intercollegiate Anatomy Lab

The Virginia Intercollegiate Anatomy Lab (VIAL), located on the eighth floor of Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital (CRCH) in downtown Roanoke, is a public-private partnership between the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, and Radford University Carilion.

VIAL offers approximately 8,000 square feet of laboratory, classroom, and storage space. Included in that space is a 2,816-square-foot laboratory that accommodates 15 separate stations, which can be used to teach large anatomy laboratory sections of up to 60 students (four students per cadaver) or multiple small sections. The space includes a cadaveric dissection laboratory, a state-of-the-art classroom/briefing room, and a cool-temperature storage facility.

Research-Dedicated Magnetic Resonance Imaging Scanners

The Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC is home to two powerful, research-dedicated functional magnetic resonance imaging scanners on site in Roanoke, with an additional one housed on the Blacksburg campus.

These scanners allow researchers to explore which areas of the brain are activated in response to various stimuli and situations. And because these particular devices are connected both to each other and other machines around the world, scientists can watch how the brains of two different subjects react simultaneously to shared experiences, such as playing economic games.

Carilion Clinic Center for Simulation Research and Patient Safety

The Center for Simulation, Research and Patient Safety is located one block from the medical school, and is an 11,000 SF training facility. The Center includes a birthing suite and neonate care area, single patient room, operating room, trauma bay, debriefing rooms, classrooms and clinical skills lab. All rooms are equipped with video cameras and analysis software to observe and annotate simulations in real-time.

The state-of-the-art resources in the simulation center are used to train staff and faculty from all different clinical disciplines within Carilion Clinic, including medical students, specifically in years 3 and 4 of their medical school training.