Patient-care. Training. Research. Innovation. Healthcare Simulation Center
About UsSimulation Training
The Healthcare Simulation Center (HSC) by Jacksonville University provides learners with invaluable experiential learning. The HSC provides a safe and conducive educational environment that utilizes simulation to create a realistic learning experience for learners. This includes the incorporation of situational awareness, culturally diverse interpersonal communication skills, teamwork, clinical assessment, critical thinking, best practice, and skill proficiency.
We opened the Center in September of 2019 in Jacksonville, FL with a mission to reduce medical errors through cutting-edge, collaborative training designed to improve patient care. Built to resemble a hospital emergency room, the recently expanded 31,443-square-foot facility offers hospital bay training stations, HoloLens Augmented Fidelity, high-fidelity and mid-fidelity across the life span manikins, task trainers, debriefing rooms, collaborative flexible learning spaces which includes 13 classrooms, an executive conference room, and a 2,569-square-foot event conference space with state-of-the-art recording and presentation technology. The Center brings the community and emergency management healthcare professionals together for training that is uniquely designed with the HSC team for each specialty to improve care and patient outcomes.
Healthcare Simulation TrainingSimulated Experience. Real Learning.
“Our high-fidelity medical manikins provided by CAE are incredibly lifelike and responsive,” said Dr. Kathleen Kavanagh, executive director of the Jacksonville University Healthcare Simulation Center. “These manikins breathe, blink and respond as real patients do, which allows trainees to practice clinical scenarios in a realistic environment.”
Simulated Experience. Real Learning.
[Dr. Kathleen Kavanagh]
Medical errors are a huge problem for our healthcare industry. There's about 400,000 medical errors a year.
[Dr. Christine Sapienza]
You have things like maternal death on the rise. You still have things occur like falls in hospitals. You still have issues with infection control. All of this is better trained when you can repeat and repeat process, and that's best done in simulation.
[Dr. Kathleen Kavanagh]
Simulation training helps to provide a safe environment for healthcare professionals to work together collaboratively as a team and then also practice in a safe environment where they can't harm a patient. If there is an error made within that training environment, they can review it debrief on it, correct it, and then increase the quality of care when they are in the actual healthcare setting.
[Dr. Christine Sapienza]
You're in a low-risk environment you're not dealing with human patients you're dealing with mannequins. So in simulation that allows us to be able to tackle some of these more pressing issues.
[President Tim Cost]
Great thing about coming to this brand new simulation center is it fits the vision not only of the university, it fits the vision of the healthcare providers in this region. You come in here and it is as lifelike a representation of the environment as you could want to have and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to teach applied. You come into a place like this it's not a place with classrooms this is a place where you're walking through a true simulation center feels like you're in a hospital.
[Dr. Kathleen Kavanagh]
Our high-fidelity mannequins provide a very realistic environment for a learner to practice on. The high-fidelity mannequin represents the most humanistic type of patient that we could have and as the learner is practicing using these types of mannequins we are able to change that mannequin to represent what that learner's action does. So if the learner does something incorrectly, if they give a medication that they shouldn't have given and it should drop their blood pressure because they gave that medication, then we changed the mannequin to do that.
[Dr. Christine Sapienza]
The mannequins really serve as the pseudo patient and this is this is happening really
globally. Simulation centers are being built in universities and medical centers all
over the world.
[Dr. Kathleen Kavanagh]
We do want healthcare professionals or learners to make mistakes in this safe environment this is a positive environment we encourage our learners to always feel comfortable here never to feel threatened or insecure. If a mistake is to occur we want it to happen in this environment so it is not on a real person and that is the benefit of training in this healthcare center.
[Dr. Christine Sapienza]
It's a special place for Jacksonville because we don't have anything like this in our community. One central location that could serve all different types of clients to learn, repeat, gain knowledge, and skills on practice patterns.
What We Do
The Healthcare Simulation Center (HSC) at the Jacksonville University Brooks Rehabilitation College of Healthcare Sciences (BRCHS) provides learners with invaluable experiential learning that complements our interdisciplinary course curriculum. The HSC provides a safe and conducive educational environment that utilizes simulation to create a realistic learning experience for learners. This includes the incorporation of culturally diverse interpersonal communication skills, teamwork, clinical assessment, and skill proficiency into increasing medically complex critical thinking scenarios that result in the provision of safe, quality, and patient-centered care.
The HSC is offering a Practical Nurse (PN) program in partnership with Baptist Health. This professional studies program is designed to be completed in 12 months and prepares graduates to sit for the National Council Licensure Examination (NCLEX) to become a Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN).
Our Mission
Research shows many medical errors can be prevented by implementing quality care, best practices/processes, and by improving teamwork and communication throughout the duration of a patient’s treatment, which often includes emergency responders, various specialists and multiple shift changes. This is why the Jacksonville University Healthcare Simulation Center is committed to improving the quality of patient care and reducing patient errors by using interprofessional simulation training scenarios and realistic high fidelity manikins to focus on teamwork, communication skills, identification and prevention of patient safety risks that may lead to adverse outcomes. Local healthcare systems have recognized the center’s excellence and each trains their newly licensed graduate nurses in hospital specific residency programs that focus on best practice of care and facility policies. We are committed to improving the quality and safety of patient care in the healthcare system. By delivering state-of-the-art educational programs that utilizes simulation, teamwork, and communication for health promotion and disease process across a patient’s lifespan.
Community PartnershipsAbout Our Partners
The HSC partners with local community agencies and hospitals for the provision of simulation experiences, nurse training, hospital graduate nurse residency programs, emergency preparedness response training, and long term care training. Collaboration with our healthcare community partners is highly valued and is the focus of our mission statement. Simulation training at the HSC provides the necessary training for seamless transition of continued learning for the delivery of quality and safe care in all healthcare settings.
The HSC collaborates with the Jacksonville University Brooks Rehabilitation College of Healthcare Sciences faculty and with leading physician experts from local hospitals on the development of interprofessional simulation curriculum.
In The Words of Our Community Partners
HealthTrust Workforce Solutions
HealthTrust Workforce Solutions is proud to partner with the Jacksonville University Healthcare Simulation Center to offer our StaRN nurse learners the opportunity to obtain hands-on nursing skills in a state-of-the-art facility. This partnership ensures that our new nurses are equipped with the knowledge and experience to provide quality patient care within the community, especially during a time when the need for care is greater than ever.
Northeast Florida Regional Council
We approached the JU STAR Center about developing a COVID-19 related training for long-term care facility workers. They accepted the challenge and created a thoroughly researched and realistic video training. The professionalism and attention to detail resulted in a video training appropriate for anyone working in the long-term care setting. We look forward to working on future training projects with the JU STAR Center.
LTC Training Video for COVID-19
Baptist Health
Since 2015 the BH nurse residency program has partnered with the Healthcare Simulation Center at JU. I cannot say enough about the quality of the experience this partnership afforded our new residents nor are there sufficient adjectives to paint the picture of the knowledge, skills and professionalism the simulation team brought each week to the training of this group of novice nurses. Our partnership has been and continues to be a blessing for which I am most grateful.
— Liz Bruno MSN, RN| Chief Learning Officer| Baptist Health
Jacksonville University is grateful for the generous support of our philanthropic partners. Thank you!
Request for Information
Contact Information Healthcare Simulation Center
5940 Beach Boulevard, Jacksonville, FL 32207
Phone: (904) 256-7949
Email: hsc@ju.edu