Wouldn't it be nice if they had some practice first?

Students at the Davis Applied Technology College will have just that opportunity in the school's new Virtual Healthcare Training Center. Aspiring nurses will practice medical procedures on lifelike simulator mannequins, while those studying to become surgical technicians have a realistic operating room to practice in.

The goal is to have students complete up to 25 percent of their clinical training in the lab, DATC President Michael Bouwhuis said. The biggest hurdle in getting new medical professionals into the workforce is logging clinical hours on real patients in the hospital. With the new equipment, students can work on their dummy patients any time, reducing the number of in-hospital hours needed.

The incredibly lifelike mannequins can display a wide variety of symptoms, said Kathy Dreyer, practical nursing clinical coordinator at the school.

In addition to basic skills such as blood pressures and pulses, the dummy patients can make different heart, lung and bowel sounds and can even simulate cardiac and respiratory arrest. They also come with interchangeable genitalia, allowing catheter practice on both sexes.

Dreyer said a root cause of the ongoing nursing shortage is the lack of qualified and willing faculty. Utah has plenty of students eager to become nurses, but student enrollment in nursing programs is limited by the number of faculty available. With the new lab's capabilities, one teacher can observe several students at once.

Students Erica Grisby and Sharon Lindquist have already had a chance to work in the new lab, and both have been impressed. Grisby explained that students treat the mannequins just like real patients, giving them a chance to become accustomed to the routine. Lindquist likes that she can practice procedures on a dummy who cannot be hurt before performing them on live people.

DATC's focus is on competency-based education, explains Pam Carter, surgical technology program coordinator. Students practice skills repeatedly until they feel comfortable and have shown complete mastery. Carter's students now have a realistic operating room to practice in, including a scrub sink, operating table and a laparoscope surgical camera.

This educational approach combined with the new high-tech practice facilities give DATC students an advantage when they enter the job market, said Michael Jensen, CEO of Davis Hospital in Layton. The mannequins allow students to see symptoms they may not see in years of working in a hospital, making them better prepared when those rare problems arise. Jensen is even sending some of the nurses at his hospital to the lab for training. And when graduation roles around, Jensen will be heavily recruiting at DATC.

"I'll take them all," he said of this year's graduating class.

kdrake@sltrib.com