As part of a $2 million renovation that took place over the summer, Illinois Wesleyan University’s School of Nursing now functions like a virtual hospital. The renovations took place in Stevenson Hall, a 116-year-old building that has housed Wesleyan’s nursing school since 1959. All of the money for the renovations was raised through donations, and nursing staff and students are proud of their accomplishments and the new facility that they helped plan.
Now when you walk through the doors of Stevenson Hall, there is a nurses station on the left, patients in their beds with monitors on the wall, and a high-tech medicine dispensing machine nearby. The new nursing facility looks just like a hospital, but it isn’t really. However, the Wesleyan nursing school has everything it needs to move its staff and students into the future.
Wesleyan says every member of their nursing faculty and staff contributed to the fundraising effort, with donations coming from students, alumni, parents, and local doctors and health care systems. The newly remodeled area has been renamed the Jarvis Center for Nursing Excellence, after Carolyn Jarvis who has been a nursing faculty member since 1990 and the lead donor for the project. Jarvis said she did it for the students, wanting to give back and prepare future generations of nurses.
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Now that the remodeling is finished, all of the core nursing classes can be held in one building. The remodel was intended to be realistic, and students were involved in designing their new classroom space. Students will now have access to the hospital-like nursing intervention lab which is designed to simulate acute care, including a health assessment lab set up like a doctor’s office for ambulatory care, and an apartment-like setting for practicing home health care. The facility also houses a simulation lab and pediatrics area.
What students love most about their new nursing building is that their clinical experiences in the simulation labs feel real. Students say they feel like they’re walking into a hospital, and the simulations make them more confident in their abilities as nurses. The simulations and new mannequins like SimMom, a “pregnant” mannequin that simulates giving birth and associated complications, didn’t come cheap. However, the simulations allow students to practice common and serious but rare situations that they might not encounter in real clinical settings.
The Wesleyan nursing school has about 180 students. There are no plans to expand the size of the nursing school because the current size allows faculty members to build meaningful relationships with their students. Illinois Wesleyan is unique in the way they offer a fabulous nursing school in a liberal arts environment, and they intend to keep it that way.
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