KR Wolfe Inc was proud to be onsite working with multiple vendors bringing the UCSD 100,000-square-foot Medical Education and Telemedicine Center to life. KR Wolfe performed numerous projects at the state of the art facility, from integrating all communications, video, and audio cabling in the 359-seat auditorium, to installing and integrating the state of the art medical equipment throughout the facility. KR Wolfe is proud to have provided services and a be part of the largest medical training facility in the world.
UCSD Medical School Opens $70 Million Training Center
The UC San Diego School of Medicine has opened a $70 million state-of-the-art medical training center — the first since the medical school opened in 1968 — fulfilling a longstanding desire by UCSD to bring all of its training programs under one roof.
The 100,000-square-foot Medical Education and Telemedicine Center, which opened as classes started last week, combines and expands programs now scattered around the La Jolla campus and at the UCSD Medical Center in Hillcrest.
The three-story center includes authentic mock-ups of emergency rooms, intensive care units, surgeries and treatment rooms where students, medical faculty and visiting physicians can hone skills using $30 million worth of advanced medical equipment including the latest in laparascopic and robotic surgery.
And, school officials say, students will get a more seamless learning experience by being able to practice caring for a patient in the ER, intensive care and surgery.
The building also is equipped for students and physicians to video-conference around the world with any clinic or doctor with similar technical capability at the other end.
“This building has been a dream of the school of medicine for many years,” said Dr. Maria Savoia, UCSD Dean for Medical Education. “The goal is to make doctors who are great at the art and science of medicine. When you make a great doctor, that affects thousands of people for years to come.”
One program that has moved from Hillcrest to the new facility on the La Jolla campus is the Center for the Future of Surgery, where medical school students learn current surgical techniques and UCSD physicians develop new ones.
Dr. Santiago Horgan, surgery center director, said medical schools often must make do with hand-me-down hospital equipment to train students. That’s not the case with the new building, which he said is the largest medical training facility in the world.
“What we had was a bicycle. This is a Ferrari,” Horgan said.
The facility includes an instructional operating room with 22 complete surgical tables, a 20-station microsurgery lab, and 18 exam rooms where students practice interviewing and examining actors posing as patients.
Students also practice on simulated adult and infant patients. The sophisticated electronic mannequins are so real they’re almost creepy, equipped with groaning voices, heartbeats and lungs that can be programmed to produce endless medical complications.
The building’s 359-seat auditorium also is the largest on campus and rooms throughout the building are connected by video network.
Planning for the building began in earnest about six years ago, and Horgan said UCSD officials gleaned ideas from touring medical training facilities throughout the United States and in Europe.
Half of the $70 million construction funding came from the UCSD School of Medicine and the other half from Proposition 1D in 2006, a $10.4 billion statewide school construction bond measure that included $3.1 billion for higher education.
Classes started in the building last week and on Thursday school officials were conducting tours. A group of four doctors in UCSD’s Department of Emergency Medicine residency program checked out the mock emergency room, rehearsing on a simulated patient complaining of chest pains.
“I’m really excited about this,” said fourth-year resident Amanda Holden, who said she graduated from the UCSD School of Medicine before entering the residency program. “This will be a much better education for medical school students. You’re exposed to so much more and have so many opportunities to practice.”
Holden said she was particularly impressed with the fully-equipped mock operating room.
“It’s unprecedented,” she said. “It gives you the possibility of simulating any scenario that exists.”
Written by
Janet Lavelle
San Diego Union Tribune
