(Radio Iowa) – The University of Iowa has landed an eight-million dollar grant to purchase three semi-sized simulators that will help Iowa’s rural first responders and community hospital staffs brush up on emergency medicine. Cormac O’Sullivan, a U-I nursing professor, says each of the three simulators will be equipped with a mock-up ambulance cab and an emergency room.

Teams from the U-I will work with the rural Iowa crews on medical procedures and in situations they don’t often encounter in sparsely-populated areas.

The grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to the U-I College of Nursing will allow O’Sullivan and other health care professionals from Iowa City to offer valuable hands-on experience to rural agencies in their own backyards for those seldom-seen situations.

O’Sullivan is co-director of the U-I’s Simulation in Motion program. The first of the three vehicles is expected to be delivered in the spring of 2022, with the other two arriving that summer.