Three years from now, BCIT health sciences students should have the use of a new $67-million building and nearly $12 million worth of specialized simulation equipment, including “extremely realistic” talking mannequins that can simulate everything from a palpable pulse to a complicated birth.
Funding was announced last month for a new, four-storey, 111,460-square-foot Health Sciences Centre for Advanced Simulation (HSCAS). The province will kick in $66.6 million for the state-of-the-art facility, while BCIT will put up the remaining $11.7 million.
Simulation has become a critical part of health-care education, according to an April 2016 concept plan for the project.
Scheduling real practicums in hospitals has become increasingly difficult, the report states, and simulations help prepare students for valuable clinical placements without stressing a busy health-care system.
“Less prepared students do disrupt a high-paced, complex workflow,” states the plan.
The new centre will simulate not just patients (with the high-tech dummies) but health-care environments too, like hospitals, community clinics and home care clinics, to familiarize students with workflows and how different disciplines work together.
That may be even more important than practising specific procedures on mannequins when it comes to improving patient care, according to the report.
“The root cause of patient safety issues often relates to elements of patient handover from one discipline to another; misunderstanding of limitations and/or challenges of the patient environments; misunderstanding of technology interfaces etc.,” states the report.
“Seldom is it specifically the procedure being done inaccurately.”
The new facility is also a step towards bringing BCIT health sciences course and programs – currently scattered across seven locations on the Burnaby campus – closer together.
Many of the current teaching spaces are “spatially constrained and functionally inadequate, both in terms of equipment and teaching space,” according to the report, and the building that houses the institute’s small existing simulation facility is in “very poor condition” and has a high seismic risk rating.
The new Health Sciences Centre for Advanced Simulation has been BCIT’s top capital priority since at least 2011.
Work on the project is scheduled to begin in summer 2018; completion is expected in 2020.
