Let’s say you’re training the next crop of app designers. Do you use a 2007-era flip-phone in the class or the newest iPhone?
Yeah. Same thing in the medical field. Technology changes so quickly in medicine it’s incredibly important for colleges to keep up.
A student demonstrates new virtual reality equipment for Nevada System of Higher Education Board of Regents Chairman Kevin Page.
“Literally, every five years or so, it’s all new,” said Andrea Wilkerson, a CSN student studying to become a respiratory therapist.
Lucky for Wilkerson and lots of other health sciences students at CSN, we’ve got a newly remodeled building set aside just for them.
The renovations to the A Building on the Charleston campus, formally known as the Claude I. Howard Health Sciences Center, were unveiled this week. Industry and higher education leaders came by to check it out.
The $10 million project includes modern new equipment for the physical therapy, radiation therapy and opthalmic assistant programs.
Physical therapy assistant students show off some of the new equipment.
There’s a cool virtual reality machine, technology to make glasses, and entire rooms full of physical therapy equipment.
Lisa Finnegan, an instructor in the physical therapy assistant program, said the new equipment will really help. The biggest benefit to the new space, though, will be the actual space.
“We have so much more space. We really needed that space, for our equipment and for students to practice,” she said.
Wilkerson, the radiation therapy student, said the new equipment and space will help students learn how to more accurately diagnose patients — and that’s the whole point, she said.
Respiratory therapy student Andrea Wilkerson talks about technology in the medical field.
“This is the best facility to learn this kind of thing,” Wilkerson said.