Hattiesburg, Miss. (Pine Belt News) – For many students in the health sciences field at Pearl River Community College, their first time dealing with patients and equipment would most likely be in a laboratory or clinical setting.

Now, however, those students have a chance to get hands-on experience – and a whole new level of understanding – before entering that scenario, thanks to the new Allied Health Simulation Lab in the Allied Health Building at the Hattiesburg PRCC campus. To celebrate the opening of the facility, a ribbon cutting ceremony was held at the site on April 21, attended by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, PRCC president Adam Breerwood, and other state and local officials.

“There’s a tremendous need for healthcare workers around the country,” Breerwood said. “We live in an area where we have outstanding healthcare facilities, and their success is contingent on the level of student that we can provide.

“So facilities like this will give those students all the education they need as they enter those facilities.”

The Allied Health Simulation Lab allows students to work with mannequins that mimic real patients while using state-of-the art, high-level technology and equipment. The facility is open to all of PRCC’s Allied Health programs, including X-ray technology, respiratory therapy, radiology and occupational therapy.

“I think any time we have the opportunity to give our students real life experience with a lot of these simulations, with these dummies and other things they have in place, it provides – in some situations – more than you can get face-to-face in a hospital,” Breerwood said. “They’re running through a variety of scenarios, so we think our students will leave here well-prepared and well-equipped, and ready to address the needs that currently exist in our surrounding communities.”

Jana Causey, vice president for Forrest County operations at PRCC, said the lab will allow students to work together to tackle situations such as how to best deal with patients in a particular scenario, how to intubate patients and how to work in certain groups.

“We can change the level of difficulty, we can change the scenarios, and the directors can work directly with them,” she said. “Directors can stop the scenario, or keep the scenario going, to work through any issues with the students prior to going to the clinical setting.

“(That way), the student is fully prepared to give the best possible healthcare to those patients.”

The Allied Health Simulation Lab was funded in part by money from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, an economic stimulus bill issued by the federal government in response to the economic fallout caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those funds enabled PRCC officials to spend approximately $75,000 on equipment for lab setup.

“We took it a step further, and we partnered with several different entities to get this facility off the ground,” Breerwood said. “We want to try to give people the best educational foundation that they need to get out into the workforce and assist the medical community around the area.

“We know that we can put people to work; we have a great opportunity to bring people into our college to teach them a skill or a trade. They immediately enter the workforce, and what we want is that they stay here locally, so they help build the tax base, build the local economy.”

Hosemann said he was proud of how the Mississippi Legislature was able to use funds from the CARES Act to benefit educational institutions and students around the state.

“We appropriated money for every school child to have an iPad and Chromebooks, and we appropriated money for technology for these young men and women to train on,” he said. “Those people will come out, and a lot of them will make more than the lieutenant governor to start.

“So this is a good deal, and that was our money that we spent and spent well too see them in training. It’s important, I think, to see not only the appropriation of the funds, but to see them come to fruition like this in training young men and women for the future.”

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