U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden met with officials from Lane Community College and PeaceHealth Wednesday to take a tour, visit nursing students and discuss the impacts of new funds headed to the college.
In the coming year, LCC will receive $500,000 in federal funds to establish a simulation lab that will help train Oregonians to work in healthcare. The lab will have state-of-the-art, high-fidelity mannequins that can simulate clinical situations with vital signs, IVs and an ability to take medication, among other capabilities.
“The purpose of simulation labs is to allow students to have as close to a clinical training situation as they can without having to be in a hospital or in an actual clinical situation,” said Cory Miner, LCC’s dean of Health Professions, Health, and Physical Education.
The lab won’t replace all clinical training, Miner said, but research has demonstrated that students who go through high-fidelity simulation perform just as well as students who go through clinical situations.
The hope is to efficiently get more students trained and ready to join the health care industry without putting a strain on clinical partners who need to provide staff for students. The lab will be a resource for all of LCC’s health profession programs as well as area health providers looking to provide their staff with further education.
The facility had already been built with a simulation lab in mind, so the funding will go toward equipment and a faculty member to run the lab for two years. After two years, the lab will be self-sufficient, Miner said.
The lab will potentially allow LCC to increase the size of some of its cohorts.
“You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to know we’ve got an enormous challenge with respect to workforce,” Wyden said. “It was huge before the pandemic, now it’s even bigger.”
Wyden said both he and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley are in support of the funds headed to LCC. During his tour Wednesday, he spoke to students interested in mental health and pediatric care.
“The students right here in this community are training for the jobs of the future,” Wyden said.
Contact reporter Tatiana Parafiniuk-Talesnick at [email protected] or 541-521-7512, and follow her on Twitter @TatianaSophiaPT.
