The new Nursing Clinical Resource Laboratory in the downstairs of Heritage House was opened to fanfare and thankful prayers on February 23.
“Nurses are involved in people’s lives from first to last,” said nursing department chair Mary Boylston. “We will be preparing students for this challenge, this privilege.”
Eastern president David Black was present at the ceremony and spoke on the nursing department’s role in fulfilling the goals of the university. Giving mercy, he said, is one of the graces a well-rounded university should have.
“We should be preparing people every year for those community graces,” Black said. “The nursing program is our preparation for mercy.”
The dedication of the center itself took place downstairs with a prayer, ribbon cutting and the marking of the doorpost with a white chalk cross. The cross was in imitation of a Jewish custom of putting prayers on the threshold as a reminder of God’s word, according to chaplain Joe Modica.
The new center will be used for the Korean nursing program, the nursing refresher course, the RN-BSN program and the BSN 2 program beginning in May, according to skills nurse coordinator Sue Seltzer.
One way in which the center serves to train nurses is by helping the Korean nurses bridge the cultural gap between Korean and American medicine.
“The Korean environment is so different from here,” first-year Korean nursing student Tu Hang Kim said. “We practice skills we didn’t have there.”
Senior Korean nursing student Mi Ra agreed.
“We can learn about the hospital’s culture,” she said.
The facility is equipped with five hospital beds containing mannequins that simulate real life conditions on which the nurses practice, according to Corrine Latini, the lab manager.
“They treat those mannequins as if they were people,” Latini said.By allowing the students to practice skills ranging from bathing to catheterization, the mannequins prepare students well for real medicine.
“Students have ample time to prepare for when they go into a hospital setting,” she said.
The members of the nursing department are thankful for the new center.
“With the good Lord’s blessing, we have something wonderful downstairs,” Boylston said.