The new IU Health Hospital in Bloomington aims to provide students in the IU Health Sciences program access to health care and clinical spaces through the use of the Indiana University Regional Academic Health Center, Brain Shockney, IU Health South Central Region president, said.
Students will have access to the IU Regional Academic Health Center and the new hospital starting on Dec. 5, according to the IU Health website.
Shockney said the academic center will allow students to train and be educated interprofessionally in the new facility with access to real life scenarios and exercises. He said these exercises will help to ensure IU and IU Health are a part of developing the next generation of health care professionals.
“One of the areas of the new campus I am most excited about is the space that brings IU Health and IU together,” Shockney said. “We have intentionally called it the ‘connector’ which will serve as a place for patients, visitors, students and team members to connect together to meet, eat and build memories.”
This space will provide the students space to become better connected with the hospital and the patients they will be serving throughout their education, Shockney said.
Shockney said the complex will feature a new state-of-the-art simulation lab that will be located in the academic center. He said the simulation will be furnished with life-like robots to emulate the real-world environment for groups of medical students, nursing and social work students.
Dr. David Daleke, Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Health Sciences, said these simulations will be identical to how the hospital rooms are actually set up.
“Students will get training with all the same equipment that they would see in their clinical experiences,” Daleke said.
The focus in creating this center was around making an interprofessional model of education for students in health sciences, Daleke said. The new facilities will offer students an improved hands-on experience because they can train alongside nurses and doctors working in their desired fields of study, Daleke said.
Daleke said all four health science programs will expand with the new hospital on campus. He said the IU nursing program is doubling in size, enabling the program to admit more students.
IU professor of nursing Dr. Deanna Reising said the new hospital will implement a nursing care program that will allow students to learn how to treat different levels of care for patients on the same unit.
“This will allow students to learn how to treat multiple stages of care for patients all in one place,” Reising said.
