Health Professions Lab Planned for Libermann Hall

Planning is under way for a new clinical learning facility for Duquesne students in the health care disciplines.

The proposed facility will occupy the entire fifth floor of Libermann Hall. Referred to as the Health Professions Clinical Learning Laboratory, it will include learning facilities for students in program in the Schools of Nursing, Health Sciences and Pharmacy.

Overall, the facility will provide the University with a dramatic increase in space dedicated to clinical simulation, which today is essential, said Eileen Zungolo, dean of the School of Nursing. The new facility will be designed around instructional technology that enhances critical-thinking and decision-making skills, an approach that focuses on the educational goals as the starting point in planning, according to Rosanna Henry, director of the nursing school’s Fritzky Lab (the current simulation lab).

For example, a portion of the lab will have the outward appearance of the patient care unit in a modern hospital, but there will be built-in digital video monitoring equipment at each bed. As students provide required services to life-like simulation mannequins in those beds, audio and video records can be made of the students’ responses and actions, creating a record that can be used for self-evaluation by the student or during an instructional dialogue between students and teachers.

Simulation creates a level of control in the clinical setting that enhances learning without risk to patient safety, but safety is not the only factor driving the need to create advanced clinical simulation, said Zungolo. Historically, clinical learning experience occurred in hospitals, but the makeup of today’s hospital patient population is vastly different than it was in years past.

Pre-operative workups are performed outside hospitals, many routine surgeries and treatments take place in physician’s offices and hospital patients are released after shorter stays than ever before. Those factors, along with the extended life of acutely ill patients, have dramatically changed the patient population.

Today’s hospital patient population tends to have a very high level of acuity, the severity of illness in their health status, Zungolo asserted. “The acuity level of the patient is so high today that it becomes difficult for the nursing student to insert himself or herself into the situation, and as a result, students can easily be marginalized from the center of patient care in many situations in the hospital setting,” said Zungolo.

Most importantly, even though many aspects of the clinical experience have changed for nursing students, the expectations for nursing graduates have not. “When they graduate, they’re expected to perform dimensions of the nursing role that they may never had a chance to practice thoroughly as students,” Zungolo added.

Despite the Health Professions Clinical Lab project being in the planning stages, with financial support needed before work can begin, Zungolo envisions the completed facility’s value quite concretely.

“Ours will be a state-of-the-art facility that will not only provide an enhanced learning experience, it will also be a strong incentive for students seeking careers in the health care professions to select Duquesne,” said Zungolo. “It is also our hope that this clinical laboratory will foster more work between the students in the health sciences so that we can achieve goals related to interdisciplinary learning.”