Senator Ron Wyden met with Lane Community College and Peace Health officials on Wednesday to take a tour, visit nursing students and discuss the impact of new funding heading to college.
Next year, the LCC will receive $500,000 from the federal government to set up a simulation lab to help train health care workers in Oregon. The lab has state-of-the-art, high-fidelity manikins capable of simulating clinical situations such as vital signs, IVs, medication competencies, and more.
“The purpose of the simulation lab is to allow students to get as close as possible to a clinical training situation without being in a hospital or a real clinical setting,” said LCC Health Professionals, Health, and Physical Education.
Labs don’t replace all clinical training, Miner said, but studies show that students who do high-fidelity simulations perform just as well as those who experience clinical situations. is shown.
The hope is to efficiently train more students and prepare them to join the healthcare industry without burdening clinical partners who need to staff them. It is a resource for all healthcare professional programs as well as local healthcare providers looking to provide additional education to their staff.
The facility was already built with a simulation lab in mind, so the funding will be for the equipment and the faculty who will run the lab for two years. In two years, the lab will be self-sufficient, Miner said.
This lab may allow LCCs to scale up some cohorts.
“You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know that you’re in big trouble with your workforce,” Wyden said. “It was huge before the pandemic, and now it’s even bigger.”
Wyden said he and U.S. Senator Jeff Markley both support the money going to LCCs. During Wednesday’s tour, he spoke with students interested in mental health and pediatric care.
“Students in this community are being trained for the jobs of the future,” Wyden said.
Please contact reporter Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick at Tatiana@registerguard.com or 541-521-7512 and follow her on Twitter @TatianaSophiaPT.
