Nursing school anticipates new facilities

By March 2007, VCU’s nursing students should be attending their classes in a new building on the Medical Center Campus.

“Things are going extremely well. We are very pleased with the progress being made,” said Brian Ohlinger, associate vice president for Facilities Management. “We are slightly ahead of schedule, which is very good because it lets us play around with the weather. If we get a period of bad weather, then we have a little bit of time to give back to the project.”

Once students enter the 70,000 square-foot building, they will find up-to-date equipment such as patient simulators and a new clinical learning center that allows them to learn the latest nursing-education technologies. Also, they can see skilled labs, hospital-patient rooms, adequate research space and two lecture halls that can seat about 140 students.

Nancy Langston, dean of the School of Nursing, said the new building will accommodate advanced teaching methods.

“It is difficult to attract prospective teachers and researchers in this current old building that is poorly designed to support modern-day teaching or research,” she said.

As an example, she cited a new simulator that allows students to practice pelvic exams on a female pelvic model.

“The pelvis is hooked up to a computer, which will tell the students how much pressure is applied,” Langston said. “It is able to simulate four different pathologies. This will literally give students experience that we know is randomly available in the community.”

Ohlinger said a significant improvement is wireless access in the building. One of the two lecture halls, however, will have hard wiring, while another accommodates a distance-learning class.

The broadband width could bog down the network because it might not have adequate capacity, Ohlinger said, so the health sciences office will provide additional hard wiring for one of the lecture halls.

Heather Sykes, a nursing student, said once the building is finished, students will have access to more computer labs than they did in the old building.

“Now, nursing students have to go all the way to the academic campus to gain computer access,” she said, “so it will be nice to study, and we will have a place where students can meet.”

Sykes said students can practice on dummies for their simulated activities, which helps them go through motions before working on actual patients.

Paul Timmreck, senior vice president for finance and administration, said the project not only met the budget but also met it on time. Still, a cost increase allowed the nursing school to have a free standing building.

“The project did change when we relocated it from West Hospital to the current site,” he said. “But it has not changed since we made that decision to locate it on Leigh Street at $17.1 million.”

“The school will be state-of-the-art,” Timmreck said. “I think we learned from others as they learned from us. I won’t question that it will be a real attraction to students and faculty.”

If all goes as planned, nursing students and faculty should begin using the new facilities May 2007.

“This is really going to be a great step forward,” Ohlinger said. “Finally they can get their own building, which is designed for their own instructional purposes instead of an old dormitory.”