Center for Simulation, Research, and Patient Safety
Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine students have access to a state-of-the-art simulation center, located across the street from the main medical school building. It is an 11,000 square-foot training facility, which 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 simulation center is used to train staff and faculty from Carilion Clinic as well as VTCSOM medical students and health professions students from Radford University Carilion.
[Narrator]: Simulation is practice with purpose. At Carilion Center for Simulation, Research, and Patient Safety, you'll find that purpose is above all else: quality of care. Medical training at the center encompasses a strong focus on patient safety.
[Jonathan Gleason, MD]: The center is great because it's a replica of our care environments in the hospital, so really what we can accomplish here is redesigning care in the simulation center before we roll it out in the hospital.
[Narrator]: To improve safety, one must have knowledge. Here, advanced technology and training opportunities complement robust opportunities for medical education.
[Unidentified speaker in a classroom setting]: You meet stroke alert criteria, what are your top priorities at that point?
[Dan Harrington, MD]: This simulation center is I think an incredible commitment by Carilion to support safety and quality for our patients. That's why we're here. It's not just about training residents and students and nurses and physicians, but it's that piece of training which raises the bar so that we can give better care.
[Narrator]: Better care because of research that provides results. What works? What doesn't? How can we be better? Questions that are answered here, with lifelike mannequins instead of here, with human lives.
[Sarah Parker, PhD]: My goal as a researcher is to transform care in a large way. My goal as a member of this hospital staff is to figure out how do we do it best here? One of the things that I think is so exciting about the simulation center is that we are talking about education, patient safety, research. What is next? Innovation. We're talking about all of that in the same breath .
