Aston University has opened a new £1.5m healthcare teaching facility which includes two interconnecting five-bed wards and an interactive immersive room.
The official opening ceremony was carried out by Aston University's new Chancellor Dr Jason Wouhra, in one of his first duties since his formal installation at Aston University's first winter graduation ceremony on 20 January 2025.
The state-of-the-art facility has been funded by the Office for Students, and will be used by nursing, physician associate, pharmacy and medical students.
The wards are designed to be realistic and include real hospital furniture and hospital headwalls with simulated gases, patient call bell system and the ability to simulate powercuts. Each ward has a nursing station and storage for consumables. There are hoists for the students to practise moving patients, including one which is ceiling mounted and can be used with bariatric patients.
The suite is equipped with diverse manikins, include those which are very elderly, a teenage cancer patient and a young girl with Down's Syndrome. In 2023, Aston University commissioned a realistic overweight (bariatric) manikin, R42, from company Simulation Man for more realistic and inclusive training. The University has just taken delivery of a new bariatric manikin from Simulation Man with a black skin tone, the first of its kind in the UK. The manikin has a working stoma site and urinary system, a chest compression unit and an IV line.
By simulating a wide variety of hospital, domestic and outdoor settings, an interactive immersive room will also support the new mental health nursing programme, which is currently recruiting for September 2025.
One of the wards will have an isolation area to enable nursing students to practise caring for patients with infectious diseases. This area also has an anteroom with trough sinks and elbow taps so it can double up as a surgery area for scrubbing up.
Additionally, cameras will be installed to record simulations. Recordings of healthcare scenarios staged in the new wards can either be livestreamed to students in another room to watch and discuss or be played back to the students involved in the simulation themselves to debrief them on their actions and performance.
The new wards represent further progress towards Aston University's aim to become a leading provider of healthcare education. We want our students to be well-prepared even before they go out on their first placements. The new facilities will enable us to simulate a wide variety of scenarios. The immersive room will also enhance our ability to provide innovative and fun teaching that the students will enjoy and remember."
Professor Liz Moores, Deputy Dean, College of Health and Life Sciences, Aston University
Dr Wouhra said:
"At Aston University we are continually looking to innovate and improve our offering to students. The more immersive we can make our training and the more we can foster entrepreneurial mindsets in our students then the higher chance they have of succeeding and making a difference to wider society.
"It's why we have invested in this new facility, and it really was breathtaking to see first-hand how the new facility and its state-of-the-art kit replicates real-life medical scenarios."
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