Sargent Center for Simulated Clinical Experience
For more than 140 years, Sargent College has been a place for innovative learning, interprofessional engagement, and clinical discovery, making us a global leader in health education and practice. This legacy continues today as we enhance our curriculum, technology, and facilities to meet the evolving needs of student experiential learning with a particular focus on improving health equity, systems, and policy. Healthcare education requires a unique blend of hands-on, skills-based training with deep experience in social-emotional competencies. And it requires the ability to collaborate with colleagues across specialties and disciplines to deliver the very best patient outcomes. In the dynamic and often frenetic environment of the acute care clinic, those skills are required – with confidence – on day one.
There is no better way to prepare our students for this clinic environment than to create it here, as part of the curriculum. That’s the vision for our Center for Clinical Simulation, an innovative learning and lab space where students learn from simulated real-world patient interactions.
Merging the Classroom with the Clinic
Learning has always extended beyond the classroom at Sargent. Now we’re broadening the scope of that classroom. The Simulation Center merges the classroom with the clinic. Located on the third floor of Sargent College, this state-of-the-art center mirrors a real-world clinical setting, featuring acute care hospital rooms, a control room, and debriefing area. Students learn through fully interactive, guided teaching experiences under the mentorship of clinical faculty experienced in simulation design and facilitation. These immersive experiences include both manikins as well as standardized patients who will act out a variety of disorders, symptoms, and scenarios and who can challenge students’ diagnostic and treatment abilities.
Building Confidence through Human-Centered Education
What we do is human centered. We connect with and listen to our patients with compassion, understanding, and often empathy. This is the heart of our professions, not easily learned in classrooms or lecture halls. It can only be honed through practice. The Sim Lab allows students to not only enhance their assessment and diagnostic abilities but also to practice these human-centered skills through simulated interactions with patients, family members, and loved ones. And students gain the necessary confidence while doing so. Confidence in their technical skills, confidence in their therapeutic abilities, and the confidence to listen and provide the social-emotional support at the core of these interactions.
The Lab provides students a holistic and immersive learning experience by combining health, healing, and heart in a way that only a Sargent education can deliver. We are excited about this new addition and invite you to be a part of the enduring legacy of Sargent College, as we continue to build the future of healthcare education.
SIM Center Highlights
The 1,400 square foot complex located on the third floor of Sargent College is an interdisciplinary lab offering guided and interactive real-world clinical experiences for our students across programs including Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Speech Language Pathology, and Nutrition. The center experience includes:
- Two simulation rooms which will function as an acute care hospital suite with a hospital bed, bedside table, wall-monitors, IV poles, and more
- Radiology suite
- Conference room
- Control room, storage area, and ante room
- Standardized simulated patients and/or manikins
Resources
Contact us
Samantha Brown
Interim Director of Clinical Simulation
617-353-7497 | sabrown@bu.edu
Tammy Nguyen
Manager, Simulation Education
617-353-2622 | nnguyent@bu.edu
635 Commonwealth Avenue | Directions | sarsim@bu.edu