Mount Carmel emphasizes team care in $1.2M patient-simulation facility

Business First by Carrie Ghose, Staff reporter

Mount Carmel Health System says it can enhance training for teamwork under health reform with its expanded and consolidated simulation facility dedicated on Monday.

The $1.2 million Mount Carmel Clinical Skills and Simulation Center, taking up the fourth floor of a State Street medical office building next to Mount Carmel West Hospital, has bene quietly operating since late August. The four-hospital Roman Catholic system has used robotic patient simulators – computerized dummies that talk, have a pulse and bleed – in individual departments but is the last system in Columbus to have a dedicated facility for patient simulation.

The center will be used by medical students, medical residents, the nursing school, staff nurses and allied health professionals, paramedics and even organizers of community training sessions such as for those caring for a relative at home, said Steve Marks, operations manager. The center includes both hospital room settings and a mock apartment with living room, bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, he said, and also could be used by programs such as therapy for disabled veterans re-learning daily tasks.

Having nurses work alongside physicians, and students with staff, in joint training programs is important for reducing errors and improving the coordination of care, said Dr. Charles Sanders, system vice president of medical education.

“We want to teach our young folks from the beginning ... to work together as a team,” he said.

Other Central Ohio systems have added new simulation labs or expanded them in recent years to give a realistic practice handling trauma or even simple suturing without risk of harming a patient.