The College of Medicine鈥檚 MD program made its long-awaited move to the new Health Sciences Building this summer, nearly a year after the state-of-the-art University City tower opened. Much of the College of Medicine left its longtime home on the Queen Lane Campus in East Falls to join the College of Nursing and Health Professions and the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Professional Studies in University City.
Jennifer Hamilton, MD, PhD, a professor in the Department of Family, Community & Preventive Medicine, leads simulation education for the College of Medicine and spent her summer helping facilitate the 6-mile move. 鈥淢oving happened in stages,鈥 Hamilton says. 鈥淩ather than move over in the middle of a medical school year, we waited until the summer.鈥
In a July interview, edited for length and clarity, Hamilton explains what it takes to move a medical school and highlights some of the perks of the College of Medicine鈥檚 new home.
What's it like to move a medical school?
Packing is always a nightmare. I don鈥檛 care whether you鈥檙e moving a studio apartment or a medical school. We have simulation labs, rooms full of equipment made to look like an outpatient doctor鈥檚 office or a hospital clinic. These simulations help students make the transition from the textbook years of medical school to working with real patients. For the students at the end of their second year, we had to do all of that in the old space because we couldn鈥檛 move in the middle of class. Then, in June and July, we had to get everything packed up, moved, installed and tested. Did the equipment handle the move correctly? Let鈥檚 make sure nothing broke during the transition. Is it connecting to the new networks? We鈥檝e got to have it running when the new class comes in.
How is the new Health Sciences Building different from the College of Medicine鈥檚 previous home in East Falls?
Students will notice the anatomy lab right away. It is bigger and better ventilated. Usually there鈥檚 a table for the instructor to show you the fine details of what鈥檚 going on. Now that can be projected to all the students in the room without everybody trying to squeeze in to look at the same time.
There are multiple simulation spaces in the building. I鈥檓 most involved with the simulated hospital rooms and emergency room bays. There are more of them. They are bigger and better laid out. With the medical school expanding, we can have more students come through in the same amount of time. Say you鈥檙e working in the emergency room, and you got called over because someone wasn鈥檛 feeling right. I鈥檓 in the control room saying, 鈥淣ow this horrible thing is going to happen. What do you do next?鈥
We鈥檝e got more physical space for the individual skills. We鈥檝e got models for students to learn to do a pelvic exam, a breast exam, a prostate exam. With more physical space to lay out the models, we don鈥檛 have to keep taking the displays down at night.
How does the move enable the College of Medicine to take advantage of new technology?
The new anatomy lab has a flat-screen display, about 6 feet by 3 feet. We didn鈥檛 have room for this in the old building. It shows the inside of a body. It鈥檚 made with incredibly detailed photographs of a real human body. You can pick up the virtual scalpel and go through this virtual human layer by layer. The nice thing about this, that you don鈥檛 have with an actual dissection, is you can go backwards. Surgery doesn鈥檛 have an undo button. A computer does, enabling you to go back and say, 鈥淲hat if we look at this layer instead?鈥 Or maybe you want to see what the same layer would look like on a CAT scan. Boom, you鈥檝e got it.
What's the benefit of having the health sciences all in one place?
If we want to involve nurses and doctors in an event, it is so much easier to arrange when the nursing students don鈥檛 have to come to East Falls. There鈥檚 value to being physically in the same place at the same time. We can leverage that in a way we couldn鈥檛 before.