Education Through Innovation At Palm Beach State College
By Dean Glorioso
Changing lives is not easy. But when you’re the oldest college in the community, it’s kind of what you do.
Check your history. It’s 1933 and the country is firmly in the grasp of the Great Depression. Daily life is a struggle for most. A world war looms in the near future, one that changes the global landscape for decades. And, despite the challenges of the time, Florida’s first junior college opens its doors to 41 students in West Palm Beach.
Nearly a century later, Palm Beach State College is still the community’s college, boasting 40,000 students across five campuses, an annual $1.3 billion economic impact on Palm Beach County, and a mission to transform lives and strengthen the community, particularly through health sciences.
Palm Beach State College has been sending its nursing and medical technician students to a myriad of partner hospitals, including Wellington Regional Medical Center, to complete their onsite clinical training. Now, with local facilities not always able to accommodate this vital, real-world experience, the decrease in training sites has prompted the Florida Center for Nursing to estimate a shortage of more than 50,000 registered nurses by 2025 and a need for 10,000 more medical and surgical technicians.
Increasing Palm Beach State’s capacity to train nursing students by way of simulation technology advances the quality of both the college’s health sciences programs and the community’s healthcare providers. With a 95 percent job placement rate for nursing graduates, Palm Beach State is sustaining a classroom-to-career pipeline of highly qualified medical professionals to the Palm Beach County community.
Palm Beach State’s progressive advancements are preparing tomorrow’s healthcare workers at three key locations: the Center of Excellence in Medical Simulation, the newly named Oristano Center for Innovation in Health Sciences and the Frank DiMino Center for Medical Innovation at Loxahatchee Groves. Known as the college’s “medical technology campus,” Loxahatchee Groves has earned an apropos moniker with Palm Beach State’s foray into medical innovation.
The college’s Center of Excellence in Medical Simulation houses state-of-the-art simulators and equipment currently used in the healthcare field. In 2016, the Florida College System recognized the center with the Chancellor’s Best Practice Award, which recognizes exemplary initiatives and advancements at Florida’s state colleges. Moreover, to ensure best practice, the center has partnered with the University of Florida and the Yale New Haven Health System, leading institutions in the use of medical simulation.
Located on the Lake Worth campus, the renovated center replicates actual patient-care environments, including emergency and intensive care units. Medical procedures are enacted with human simulators, such as the SimMan 3G, a durable patient manikin used for realistic scenarios and hands-on experience. In addition, an ambulance simulator allows students to engage in transfer of care while high-tech innovation provides for authentic medical training. In fact, nursing students are now able to complete 50 percent of their clinical training through simulation rather than the previous 25 percent, illustrating the need for and significance of expanding the existing center to accommodate larger cohorts of future nurses.
David Rutherford, vice president of advancement and CEO of the Foundation for Palm Beach State College, has been instrumental in securing much-needed funding for health sciences. “Embracing this movement of innovation for healthcare education helps us to diminish barriers to skill acquisition, essential training and job preparation and placement,” he said. “Ultimately, the use of educational technology increases our capacity to supply the community with competent healthcare professionals.”
At the college’s Palm Beach Gardens campus, the Oristano Center for Innovation in Health Sciences is home to cutting-edge technology. Diagnostic Medical Sonography is Radiography’s flagship program, while Ophthalmic Medical Technology is nationally recognized and the only such program in the state that is accredited to offer Certified Ophthalmic Medical Technologist training.
The DiMino Center and newly constructed Dental and Medical Services Technology Center at the Loxahatchee Groves campus house Surgical Technology, Dental Hygiene and Health Information Technology, as well as the Dental, Medical and Physical Assisting programs. While all use modern medical technologies, it’s still the human element that remains at the heart of health sciences at Palm Beach State College.
The role of any responsible institution of higher learning resides in the guidance of its students. Palm Beach State programs emphasize mentorship while providing students with experiences that allow them to develop fundamental skills, become confident in their fields of study and be better prepared for transitions to actual workplace environments.
With its commitment to ensuring the well-being of those who call this community home, Palm Beach State’s strongest contribution perhaps lies with emergency services, as 85 percent of Palm Beach County’s first responders complete their training with the college. Hopefully, we’ll never need these services, but, if we do, the care we receive likely came because of education through innovation at Palm Beach State College.
Learn more about Palm Beach State College at www.palmbeachstate.edu.
