Queensborough launches Virtual Hospital

With one of the largest clinical nursing programs in the New York metropolitan area, it only makes sense that Queensborough Community College’s Department of Nursing recently established a four-bed Virtual Hospital.
It will allow more than 350 nursing students a year to develop their clinical practice skills using life-like mannequins that replicate human physiological life signs. The Roslyn Savings Foundation is sponsoring the first two mannequins with a $15,000 grant to the college. “The Virtual Hospital will provide the college’s substantial body of ESL students an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the use of English in clinical settings,” said Dr. Maureen Wallace, Chairperson of the Nursing Department at Queensborough Community College. “This is crucial to their success.”
This program will help Queensborough, the main educator of registered nurses in Queens, with its more than 6,000 graduates since 1967, to alleviate New York City’s nursing shortage.
Technology is playing an increasingly crucial role in the education of nursing students. Using the simulators, instructors will evaluate students’ diagnostic and interpersonal skills. Students will be videotaped, allowing them to maximize strengths and correct weaknesses.
The Virtual Hospital will help students develop and hone their critical thinking and clinical practice skills.
Queensborough is actively seeking additional funding from public and private sources to develop a comprehensive program to meet the ESL students and medical community’s needs. Students in the program are predominantly minority: 31% are African Americans; 26% are Asian; 15% are Hispanic or Latino; 25% are Caucasian, and 3% are Native American/Alaskan. Only 25% of these students were born in the United States.
Seventy-five percent of Queensborough Community College’s nursing students were born in a foreign country, and English is not their first language. “The mannequins represent the latest in healthcare technology,” said Sharon G. Grosser, Executive Director of the Roslyn Savings Foundation. “The Roslyn Savings Foundation views this as critical in supporting the local community and furthering the progress of nursing education nationwide.”
Four beds is the goal of the Virtual Hospital program, with at least one of the mannequins to be “Sim Man,” a patient simulator that can be programmed to converse with students.