Levi Brandenburg
Contributing Writer
[email protected]

The Murray State School of Nursing has recently formed a consortium with Murray-Calloway County Hospital and the Purchase Area Health Education Center to build a nursing simulation center to help train and recruit nurses to meet the current need across the area.

Dina Byers, dean of the School of Nursing and Health Professions, worked with Dana Todd and Tonia Mailow to secure a grant from USDA Delta Health Services. 

After submitting the grant application in August, they were made aware that they had been awarded $960,000 to put toward the simulation center.

The Delta Health Care Services Grant program provides financial assistance to address the continued unmet health needs in the delta region. Grants are awarded to promote cooperation among health care professionals, institutions of higher education, research institutions and other entities in the delta region. 

“The simulation center will give the students the opportunity to practice in scenarios that they might experience in emergency situations,” Todd said. “In the simulation center, it’s practically real life but with these mannequins.”

The simulation center will be housed at Murray-Calloway County Hospital, where many nursing students attend their clinicals.

“This is a collaborative effort,” Todd said. “It’s a good way for students to practice emergency events or events that you don’t see very often that could be very serious. It gives them the opportunity to get that experience before they’re in a real-life situation. It’s also a benefit to the hospital as well. Their nurses will be able to use the space as well for training, so it’s a win-win for both Murray State University and for the hospital.” 

The simulation center will help the students to become better in a safer, more stable environment as well. 

“It’s a safe environment for students,” Byers said. “It’s a way for faculty to give feedback to the students before they’re actually with a patient…We can talk to students about those events in the classroom, but to be able to actually have them to apply the skills that they learned in a textbook and participate, they will be able to critically think through the situation if they ever have that experience.”

The third member of the consortium, the Purchase Area Health Education Center, is largely focused on health education in the Purchase area of Kentucky. They will take the simulation equipment to school systems to recruit high school students into health career fields, Byers said. 

The University’s goal for the simulation center is to have construction completed by the fall 2021 semester.