New Nursing Facility at CSB Helps Prepare Students For Real Life Scenarios

ST. JOSEPH -- Nursing students at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University are learning and practicing their medical skills in a new space.

A dedication event for the recently completed nursing facility, the Schoenecker Nursing Education Center, was held today (Thursday) at CSB as part of the Celebrating Scholarship and Creativity Day.

The renovated facility has five patient care simulator rooms, one community home care room, one nurses station, three classrooms and one control room.

Chair of the nursing department Rachelle Larsen says the facility helps give students a hands on experience that they weren't getting in the old facility.

"We've noticed an increased confidence in students because these settings look like the practice settings they are going to go into and we can prepare them for almost any situation they'd encounter." --Larsen

Each patient care room has cameras equipped with microphones and instructors are able to view the video feed from the control room. Larsen says recording each student as they work on different tasks helps the instructor give feedback to the student and helps the student correct mistakes.

Instructors can also control room monitors, blood pressure and heart rate of the manikins in each room from the control room.

The nursing program began in 1971 and it is the fourth largest major at St. Ben's.