OSU Center for Health Sciences Unveils Oklahoma’s Largest State-of-the-Art Medical Simulation Teaching Center
Friday, September 29, 2017
By OSU Communications
Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences launches a new era of advanced medical education on September 29, 2017, with the grand opening of the A.R. and Marylouise Tandy Medical Academic Building, a state-of-the-art teaching technology center featuring the state’s largest hospital-simulation center. The simulation center brings to virtual life high-functioning simulation manikins that can mimic the human body in most every detail to give OSU medical students the closest thing technology can offer to real-life medical emergencies. The Tandy Medical Academic Building is located on the OSU Center for Health Sciences campus in Tulsa.
“This academic building is a one-of-kind in this region and the largest medical simulation program in the state. We have only just begun to explore the teaching potential of this new technology,” noted OSU President Burns Hargis. “These simulators are giving OSU medical students a giant leap forward in their understanding and hands-on learning of the human body so they will be much better prepared physicians when the patients are real.”
“Our new life-like, computer-programmed simulation manikins can perform even beyond human actors as a medical teaching tool because these very realistic virtual patients can breathe, bleed, cry, sweat and be programmed to imitate most any medical emergency,” said Kayse Shrum, D.O., President, OSU Center for Health Sciences and Dean, OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine. “The manikin simulators allow our medical students to safely experience situations they will encounter as physicians when patients’ hearts stop, breathing ceases, emergency births occur and surgeries are required. The Tandy simulation center will give students confidence in their skills and allow them to learn from mistakes without life-ending consequences. Our eventual goal is to be accredited as a national simulation center.”
The simulation center has four units: an emergency room, operating room, intensive care unit and a maternity and child birth center. In addition to the manikins, computer programs allow students to conduct hands-on robotic and laparoscopic surgeries that visually mirror actual surgical situations. The Patient-Centered Clinical Skills Laboratory, located on the second floor of the Tandy Medical Academic Building, is a scenario-based simulation using a combination of technology and actors to allow medical students to learn patient skills in a controlled environment before working with actual patients.
In addition to the simulation center, the four-story, 84,000 square-foot Tandy Medical Academic Building includes four conference rooms, lecture halls, 18 teaching patient examination rooms and an Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine lab. The $27-million academic teaching building was built with the help of a generous lead gift from the A.R. and Marylouise Tandy Foundation and 150 other donors.
“We are sharing this amazing center and its simulation-learning tools with our entire community of healthcare providers in addition to our medical students,” said Dr. Shrum. “As part of our commitment to train primary care doctors and healthcare providers to serve rural and underserved communities of Oklahoma, we are inviting nurses, medical assistants, surgical techs, phlebotomists and other providers from around the state to join us for continuing medical education training, special education programming, conferences and even youth camps to extend the teaching capabilities of this academic building.”