Jenn DeLeon (Big Bend Community College), Andrea Elliott (Big Bend Community College), and Jon Rayfield (Laerdal) had an opportunity to give a presentation about the rapidly growing field of medical simulation at the ACTE Conference today in Centralia, WA.
The ACTE Conference is a gathering of educators who “prepare youth and adults for a wide range of high wage, high skill, high demand careers” (ACTE, 2016). Specifically, these educators give high school and middle school students the training, tools, and skills that they need to gain a clear, focused pathway into technical based degrees.
Therefore, we made it a priority to ask to be a part of their conference in order to share about BBCC’s new Medical Simulation degree program. One of the highlights from our presentation was the manikin that Rayfield used to showcase some of the features that Medical Simulation Technicians can program the simulator to respond to.
The attendees in our session were mostly robotic and computer science instructors and they were really excited to hear about our program and the impact that it could have on their students’ lives. One participant shared that “degrees like this open up a new world of opportunity for students who exceed in robotics.” We could not agree more! This degree is for people who love to tinker and are always looking for ways to make things more efficient and work to a greater capacity. Additionally, this degree works with healthcare professionals in order to provide lifesaving training.
At the end of our session, many of the attendees were interested in having their students interact with BBCC’s simulation equipment and learn more about the program.