Actress Penelope Keith opens hi-tech nursing ward
Wednesday 20 January 2010
The University of Surrey’s Pro-Chancellor Penelope Keith has opened a new high-tech simulation suite designed to teach nursing skills in a realistic setting.
The actress, famed for her role in the BBC sitcom The Good Life, visited the university in her capacity as Pro-Chancellor, to officially open the Clinical Simulation Suite located in the Duke of Kent building.
The equipment in the suite in the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences reflects the challenges that health care professionals in the NHS face every day.
Dummy patients, which can talk and react in a realistic way, are a major part of the facility and different scenarios can be set up so that trainee nurses get a feel for life on hospital wards.
The Division of Health and Social Care has invested in the suite in order to give students the opportunity to be prepared fully for their professional roles.
The suite consists of a simulated ward, an operating theatre, an intensive care unit, a maternity unit and a mocked-up home.
All these are fully equipped with the simulators and audio visual aids.