(Radio Iowa) – A two-and-a-half million dollar renovation project is complete and nursing students at the University of Northern Iowa are learning in a new, high-tech setting. Nancy Kertz, who heads U-N-I’s nursing program, says the Innovative Teaching and Technology Center offers students the opportunity to learn in modern clinical environments designed to reflect real healthcare facilities. The lifelike mannequins, known as patient simulators, are crucial elements to learning.
“They are state-of-the-art, high-fidelity,” Kertz says, “and we are able to replicate any type of scenario that nurses would encounter in the healthcare setting.” Kertz, the chief academic nursing administrator on the Cedar Falls campus, says there are several dozen of the patient simulators in the new center, with varying levels of sophistication, and they’re in adult and infant sizes.
“They will mimic lung sounds, heart sounds. Students can assess neurological signs and symptoms,” Kertz says. “Some simulators can talk, make noises, groan. Other simulators, the faculty will speak through them and mimic a patient.” Using the simulators, students can administer I-Vs, check vital signs, and perform CPR, all while building confidence in patient care. The three-story building includes classrooms, faculty and departmental offices, and a health assessment skills lab, but in some areas, you’d swear you’re in an actual medical center.
“It looks like a real hospital, and that was intentional,” Kertz says. “We designed that space to include a critical care suite, a trauma suite, a pediatric suite, and a labor and delivery suite. We also have a nurse’s station and a medication administration area.” There’s also a life-sized digital cadaver that allows for detailed, three-dimensional exploration of human anatomy.
The first graduates from U-N-I’s new Bachelor of Science in Nursing program will graduate in the spring of 2027, with about 140 students now in the program, though that number is projected to rise to about 200 by this fall. At the moment, Kertz says there are about 12-hundred openings for registered nurses in Iowa.
