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Nursing Students to Get More Practice, Thanks to $1M Gift From Sharp

With the help of seven fully automated patient simulators, students at San Diego State University’s School of Nursing can practice how to treat 90 different simulated medical conditions from heart attack to drug overdose.

The simulators arrived thanks to Sharp HealthCare, which awarded a $1 million naming gift to the university’s Human Patient Simulation Center , the largest simulation center in Southern California. The center is near Hepner Hall on the SDSU campus.

“It’s very much like walking into a hospital unit,” said Catherine Todero, director of the School of Nursing. “There is a nurses station and gurneys and equipment.”

Each simulator , four adult simulators, two infant simulators and one pediatric simulator , costs $50,000 and warranties can run up to $4,500 per simulator annually. Students are recorded during simulations and the videos are used for debriefing with faculty about each simulation, Todero said.

Students will also have an opportunity to interact with “patients,” played by professors using the center’s audio technology. Every student in each clinical course will spend one to two days in the center. The university purchased several simulators in 2005 and began renovating a space to house the center.

Dan Gross, Sharp’s executive vice president of hospital operations, called the simulation center “an innovative and cost-effective way to support nursing education.” He said that SDSU is the largest education program in San Diego, and with a national, regional and local nursing shortage, Sharp needed to support educational methods that support nurses.

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Superstar Support:

Tony Gwynn will work with Guardian Life Insurance Company of America in September to promote Life Insurance Awareness Month, the New York-based company announced Sept. 10.

The former San Diego Padres outfielder and recent National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee was scheduled to participate in a national radio media tour Sept. 14. Guardian did not disclose terms of the deal.

The Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education as well as companies and community leaders use the month of September to raise awareness about life insurance.

Guardian encourages business owners to discuss life insurance options with their employees during open enrollment that businesses offer in the fall, according to Rod Roberto, Del Mar-based career development supervisor for Guardian.

“Tony is a local community figure here in San Diego,” he said. “In September, most businesses have open enrollment, so we encourage our clients to meet with their financial advisors.”

Roberto said that Gwynn will speak about how his family was directly impacted by life insurance when his father prematurely passed away.

“Fortunately, he (Gwynn) was in a position financially, as opposed to most people in the U.S.,” he said. “We also emphasize the living values of life insurance.”

Guardian has 4,357 clients in the San Diego region and more than 80,000 statewide.

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UC San Diego Launches Telemedicine Program:

In a double initiative, the class at UC San Diego’s School of Medicine has expanded and the school itself is preparing to launch a telemedicine center.

Telemedicine is “the use of medical information exchanged from one site to another via electronic communications to improve patients’ health status,” according to the American Telemedicine Association’s definition.

The school added 12 students with the addition of PRIME-HEq, a program launching this month for students interested in working with under-served communities, said university officials.

The five-year program will allow medical students an extra year to focus on an area of study that relates to health care equity , such as law or business. For each of the next four years, 12 more students will be added.

“We’re building the curricula around issues of health care equity,” said Dr. Maria Savoia, vice dean for education at UCSD. “We trust that it will have a ripple effect for the rest of the students.”

In May, the school received a $1 million grant from the California Telemedicine & eHealth Center to develop a telemedicine learning center, said officials. The center and new medical program for students are “sort of conjoined but separate,” Savoia said.

The center will train doctors and physicians in telemedicine practices starting in 2008. Savoia added that the telemedicine center is scheduled for a 2010 or 2011 completion and educational facilities will be located within the building for PRIME-HEq students with a telemedicine focus.

The center will also work with the Community Clinics Health Network, which represents clinics throughout San Diego County. One project will evaluate Community Clinics’ access to medical records for patients treated at UC San Diego hospitals.


Send health care news to Jaimy Lee at

jlee@sdbj.com

. She may also be reached at (858) 277-6359, ext. 3107.

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