About Us

About Us

History

The SimCenter was created during a time when TRICARE, the health care program of the Department of Defense Military Service System, was shortening hospital stays. As a result, medical students had fewer chances to practice their clinical skills in hospital settings. The idea of augmenting medical learning opportunities using simulation training took off.

Working with a wide array of partners from the Department of Defense and other federal agencies the simulation center now delivers an expansive selection of training tools from simulated clinical exams using live patients, to task trainers designed to improve skills and in procedures, to the Wide Area Virtual Environment or WAVE for team training of combat medical and surgical teams.

Learning By Experience

At the SimCenter medical procedures are simulated that are high risk or high consequence for patient safety. The simulations allow healthcare personnel develop and maintain the cognitive and psychomotor skills necessary to perform medical tasks safely and effectively.

Students are taught with the widest range of simulations from living “standardized patients” to high-fidelity computerized mannequins, simulated surgical suites with task trainers (3-D replications of body parts such as a chest cavity or abdomen) virtual reality part-task trainers, and a 1,000 square foot immersive virtual reality theater.The simulation center provides approximately 34,000 hours of simulation programming each academic year and is available to all medical and nursing students, interns, residents, and other health care professionals in the USU community. By the time they graduate, learners will have participated in up to 40 different simulations.