Goodwin nursing simulation center to give students a range of medical skillsets

CT Insider – Thursday, May 1, 2025
By Jamila Young

EAST HARTFORD — While the patients at Goodwin University’s soon-to-be-built nursing simulation center aren’t human, they will have all of the human traits needed to aid students in their journey to becoming medical professionals.

A “wall-breaking” ceremony was held Monday for the $3 million center, which Goodwin hopes to have up and running by the fall 2025 semester.

Vivienne Friday, Goodwin’s Dean of Nursing and Health Professions and Chief Nurse Administrator, said the center’s construction will involve taking over a big classroom on the fifth floor and opening it up for a skills lab.

An existing office space will be converted to a doctor’s office and there will also be a pediatric doctor’s office space, a hospice/end-of-life care room and a room for health education.

With the use of interactive mannequins that can mimic ailments, students will learn how to diagnose and treat patients in a real-world setting.

“They can be simulated to blink, talk. They can be simulated for their vital signs and condition to change,” Friday said. “They can die, their heart can stop and you have to resuscitate them. You can see how the student will be able to practice skills in complex patients and scenarios that they may not be exposed to in a clinical setting.”

While low-fidelity mannequins can teach students how to check for vital signs and how to reposition a patient in bed, medium- and high-fidelity mannequins give students a chance to check heart rates, pulses and lung and bowel sounds.

“A student may walk in a room and do an assessment, and then the mannequin is set up so that after 10 minutes their heart rate goes down or up, their breathing changes, the mannequin says they’re having difficulty breathing or pain,” Friday said. “You want the student to be able to respond to those changes.”

Students will also have access to task trainers, which are simulated body parts used for specific tasks such as starting an IV, learning about pressure ulcers and dealing with chest tubes.

The center, and its simulators, will allow the students to gain more of a range of skills than they would when doing their clinicals, Friday said.

“Some students may never see a birth and we have a birthing mom,” she said. “I went to nursing school and I never saw a birth. There are some things students may not see in a practice, but they are things they should know, that we can simulate.”

Friday said the leadership team decided Goodwin needed to expand on simulation education about two years ago.

“Based on trends in health care, patient complexities and limited student exposure, we realized we had to do something more robust,” she said. “We also looked at international standards to support our simulation education.”

Friday said the university is also adding a position with a focus on simulation education and another position to help with programming and managing the mannequins.

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