Clinical Simulation Laboratory
Message from the Director
The Clinical Simulation Laboratory serves as an institutional and community resource helping to ensure that patients receive the highest quality of care. Our programs focus on a wide range of clinical training including procedural skills, interprofessional team training and patient safety. Simulation is more than just procedure skills; it's about learning how to communicate and how to work effectively as a team. Using simulation we are able to provide an ideal learning environment where errors are transformed into powerful teaching tools. The benefit of simulation is that it allows deliberate practice of skills, a sense of realism and real-time problem solving together with supervised instruction in a low-risk setting. Simply stated; “when you put the patient first, you don’t first practice on the patient”. Ultimately our goal is to link educational programs into meaningful patient outcomes. We partner with faculty and students to provide the very best of clinical education to allow our users to provide the very best of clinical care.
Ted James, M.D.
Director of Clinical Simulation
Associate Professor of Surgery and Attending Oncology Surgeon
About Us
A collaborative effort of the UVM College of Medicine, the UVM College of Nursing and Health Sciences, and Fletcher Allen Health Care, the Clinical Simulation Laboratory is a centralized hub that brings together many different groups and constituencies, with the ultimate goal of improving quality and safety of care.
The Clinical Simulation Laboratory is located on the second floor of the Rowell and Given Buildings on the University of Vermont campus and adjacent to Fletcher Allen Health Care, fostering a culture of collaboration and partnership. The "Sim Lab" opened in March 2011, headquartered in 12,600 square feet of newly-renovated space. At a cost of just over $4 million, the Sim Lab was supported by a generous gift from the late Thomas Sullivan, M.D., a UVM/Fletcher Allen medical alumnus from Etna, N.H., along with a $1.75 million federal grant secured by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy.
Features include adult and child mannequin simulators that demonstrate physical responses; six in-patient hospital rooms, each equipped with video cameras for recording and communicating; a multi-purpose room that can function as a simulated Operating Room, Emergency Room or Intensive Care Unit; a professional skills/task training lab with body-part models for learning how to draw blood, wound care, lumbar puncture, joint injection, insertion of central lines, insertion of IV line, arterial blood draw, chest tube insertion, and airway management; a virtual reality lab for practicing surgical skills; and debrief rooms. Standardized patients - community members who have been specially trained to accurately portray specific patient roles or conditions - are integrated with simulation technologies in this facility.
Mission Statement
The Clinical Simulation Laboratory (CSL) is dedicated to perfecting health care delivery by using simulation to improve clinical skills and enhance patient safety through innovations in clinical training, educational research, and quality improvement. Through these efforts the CSL seeks to achieve systems integration, interprofessional collaboration and value-driven health care.
Vision Statement
Health care providers empowered with the skills to deliver the best possible care to every patient, every time - working within a culture of excellence and continually striving to elevate the standard of patient care.
Collaborative Partners
College of Medicine
At the UVM College of Medicine, students become engaged early in clinical experience and community outreach, hallmarks of our nationally-acclaimed medical education curriculum. Together with the UVM College of Nursing and Health Sciences, and teaching hospital partner Fletcher Allen Health Care, we serve as Vermont’s Academic Medical Center. The mission of the College is to educate a diverse group of dedicated physicians and biomedical scientists to serve across all the disciplines of medicine; to bring hope to patients by advancing medical knowledge through research; to integrate education and research to advance the quality and accessibility of patient care; and to engage with our communities to benefit Vermont and the world. Learn more about the College of Medicine.
College of Nursing and Health Sciences
The UVM College of Nursing and Health Sciences has a mission to serve society at state, national and global levels through education of health professionals, development of new knowledge, and healthcare advocacy that transforms lives by preventing illness and injury, promoting health and wellness and assuring evidence-based clinical interventions in the management of disease and disability. Our intimate size within a major research university creates an ideal academic environment for health sciences. Clinical training is a focus for all of the College's programs, and students graduate as qualified agents of health and change. Learn more about the College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Learn about Simulation Education at the CNHS.
Fletcher Allen Health Care
Fletcher Allen Health Care, together with our partners at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and the College of Nursing and Health Sciences, is Vermont’s academic medical center. Fletcher Allen’s mission is to improve the health of the people in the communities it serves by integrating patient care, education and research in a caring environment. Fletcher Allen also serves as a regional referral center -- providing advanced care to approximately one million people in Vermont and northern New York -- and as a community hospital for approximately 150,000 residents in Chittenden and Grand Isle counties. Learn more about Fletcher Allen.
Last modified February 27 2013 12:13 PM
