 Nicole Tylavski (left) and Debbie Hosak practice their blood-pressure taking techniques on fellow student Kim Acton in the new nursing clinical instruction labs on the IUSB campus. With the move from South Bend's Memorial Hospital to the heart of the campus' Northside Hall, nursing students are in close proximity to the science and liberal arts divisions, providing them with a more traditional college experience. |
With a skills test scheduled every week, Indiana University South Bend nursing students like Nicole Tylavski, Debbie Hosak and Kim Acton need time to practice the essentials, such as taking a patient's blood pressure.
In the past, squeezing in practice time between IUSB classes wasn't an option. The clinical lab was two miles north of campus, in the former Memorial Hospital School of Nursing. This year, getting practice time is as easy as dropping into an open lab section in the new clinical nursing laboratory in IUSB's Northside Hall.
"We love it. It's convenient," said Hosak, as she wrapped the blood pressure cuff around Acton's arm.
Moving the clinical labs from Memorial to campus achieves a long-time goal to give nursing students a more traditional IUSB experience and to put the nursing school in closer proximity to IUSB's science and liberal arts divisions, where students take many of their requirements.
The change represents a natural transition for a school which itself began off-campus, as the former nursing program of South Bend's Memorial Hospital. Through a partnership with IUSB, Memorial Hospital has gradually phased nursing education out of its program, except for placements of students in its hospital and clinical units.
The partnership left the IUSB School of Nursing operating basically in three spheres: the clinical laboratory remained in the former Memorial Hospital School of Nursing building two miles off campus. Student services and nursing faculty were based in a small riverfront facility across the street from campus, where dental hygiene and assisting students see patients on the campus's only on-site patient clinic. Students themselves took their courses in various classroom sites throughout campus or, through distance learning, at the Elkhart IUSB campus.
In recent years, Dean Marian Pettengill has arranged to have nursing educational software loaded on IUSB's computer network, giving nursing students the same late-night computer lab access to software tutorials that students in the other divisions enjoy.
Two construction events precipitated this final move to the heart of campus. Memorial's board decided to raze the former nursing school to make way for a new facility. And Wiekamp Hall opened on the IUSB campus, giving all divisions more room to spread out. Construction of the first laboratory was speeded when Memorial Hospital donated more than $160,000 for the unit.
The laboratories simulate the environment found in in-patient and out-patient settings. Plastic mannequins of various ages, genders and with varying afflictions rest in new hospital beds, bedpans at the ready.
The school is by no means cutting its ties to Memorial. In fact, the clinical learning labs will be named the Memorial Hospital School of Nursing Learning Resource Center. And because the program will be less community based, Pettengill has established an advisory board to keep the community's needs in the forefront.
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