Broward College will break ground on its Health Science Simulation Center on December 6 at the A. Hugh Adams Central Campus in Davie, FL. The ceremony begins at 10 a.m.
 
The three-story Broward College Health Science Simulation Center (HSSC) is a state-of-the-art facility providing access to the latest advances in simulation technology. The center is designed to offer future healthcare providers and decision makers the ability to experience life-threatening patient care issues without negative repercussions, and the ability to analyze the actions taken during these experiences.
 
“Broward College is proud to continue its strong tradition of providing the community with high-quality education. Currently, more than 80 percent of Broward County’s allied healthcare professionals are educated at Broward College. From x-ray and dental technicians, to massage therapists and registered nurses, the chances are good that you encounter our graduates or our alumni on a routine basis,” said Broward College President J. David Armstrong, Jr.
 
The HSSC at Broward College is designed to replicate an acute care hospital with an EMS ambulance bay, an emergency department, a critical care unit, a heart center of excellence unit, several medical-surgical units, labor/delivery and mother-baby areas that are equipped with video recording stations.
 
With the urgency of a working emergency department, the HSSC provides Broward College’s current nursing and allied health students with a unique resource to obtain optimal outcomes for their future patients. Using the latest in human patient simulators and simulation technologies, students will easily experiment with a range of scenarios, design answers to problems and faculty will be able to track student’s overall performance. Through a collaborative process, students, faculty and advisors are able to give meaning to what they discover at Broward College’s Health Science Simulation Center.
 
“December is a great month for Broward College as we will also be graduating the college’s first class of RN-to BSN students,” said Nancy R. Botero, Broward College VP of Advancement. “We are thrilled to breaking ground for the Health Science Simulation Center and invite the healthcare community and the public to join us for this momentous occasion.”
 
The Health Science Simulation Center on Broward College’s A. Hugh Adams Central Campus is scheduled for completion in 2012.


Lessons from a Community Hospital
 
Being surrounded by large tertiary care hospitals could have been a challenge for many community hospitals. But Larkin Community Hospital in South Miami not only has a thriving patient base but is performing better than many of its competitors in embracing innovation and benefiting from many health care reform initiatives specially those related to education.
 
Larkin has focused its transformation vision on its commitment to Post Graduate Medical education by becoming a teaching institution through the implementing a Graduate Medical Education program in partnership with NOVA South Eastern University (NSU) and developing residency programs in Family Medicine, Psychiatry, Podiatry, Internal Medicine, and Neuromusculoskeletal Medicine. Additionally, residency programs in dermatology and palliative care have recently been granted approval while several other programs are in various stages of the approval. Through this rapid expansion of its graduate programs Larkin expects to become a statutory teaching institution within the next couple of years. “We want to train the next generation of physicians” stated Sandy Sosa-Guerrero, Chief Executive Officer.
 
Furthermore, Sosa states, “Larkin Community Hospital will honor its Commitment Statement for Graduate Medical Education, providing the necessary resources to guarantee the effective implementation and support of quality residency programs in compliance with the AOA and the ACGME Institutional Program Requirements and Specialty-Specific Program Requirements. Our mission is to prepare physicians capable of providing compassionate, comprehensive and continuous health care to patients and families and we encourage our graduates to practice in medically underserved communities and areas of critical need in our state of Florida when they complete their training.”
 
In fact, the Department of Health and Human Services recently announced the granting of a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) grant to Larkin Community Hospital and NSU’s medical school were recently awarded a 5-year federal grant to educate medical residents to provide expert care for patients living in rural and underserved communities. The (HRSA) grant will be used to develop training programs for NSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine’s affiliated medical residency program at Larkin Community Hospital in Miami. Lasting between three to five years, medical residencies are required training for medical school graduates to become board-certified physicians. Larkin Community Hospital currently has close to fifty approved slots for residents receiving Post Graduate Training. The HRSA grant will create curriculum and clinical training in medically underserved communities, which include rural and urban areas where physicians and medical services are scarce.
 
The funds will also be used to develop training in other areas such as all hazards preparedness, genomics, and medical informatics. One of the grant’s goals is to encourage more primary care residents to become practicing physicians in these underserved areas. Research has shown that medical schools who receive this grant have produced more doctors who end up practicing in such areas.
 
Strength of the facility’s focus on education is its strong partnership with its community partners which include several area hospitals, three Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), and a network of community clinics that offer comprehensive primary and specialty care. The FQHC benefit greatly from having the hospital residents rotate through its sites to augment the medical care provided at the clinics while the hospital has a more extensive network to provide care and support to its patient base and the community.
 
Not surprisingly, Larkin has been designated as an Area of Critical Need facility, a Health Professions Shortage Area (HPSA) and a National Service Corps (NSC) site by the Health Resources and Services Administration. This designation allows for access to resources that support student training, practice development and funding for critically needed services and most importantly allows the hospital to participate in the student loan repayment program which allows certain level of write off of student debt if work is completed at a NSC approved site.
 
With its emphasis on innovation, education, and community partnerships, Larkin Community Hospital is well on its way to become a statutory teaching facility that will improve quality and patient care throughout its community.


The Learning and Organizational Development Team at Martin Memorial Health Systems is focused on developing talent in a variety of new and exciting ways. While recognizing the need to be prepared for the changes in health care and the demands on the workforce in the future, we have focused our efforts on developing talent management.
 
Our leadership team has begun the important task of succession planning to ensure the next generation of leaders is ready. At Martin Memorial that includes programs such as Emerging Leaders, Novice Nurses, and Supervisor Training that fast-track high-potential and less-experienced associates into growth roles. This is particularly important as the industry continues to change and roles and responsibilities within health care organizations change with them.
 
One of the new programs at Martin Memorial is a six-month Emerging Leaders project. It is geared for high potential associates to learn and grow together with a series of workshops, study materials, group discussions, feedback from other participants, their leaders and a mentor. The purpose of the program is to prepare a leadership pool of talent ready for up-coming leadership positions.
 
Our twelve Emerging Leaders for this year is a multidisciplinary group, ranging from associates in the pharmacy to diagnostic imaging; public relations to corporate compliance.
 
Our pilot program in 2010 was designed for new and novice nurse leaders seeking or currently new in a leadership role. We interviewed and selected eleven registered nurses to participate in the program. The participants from the program had feedback that the program was excellent, and that the content was useful for their career path. With the success of that initial pilot, Martin Memorial decided to continue the program and adapt it as necessary.
 
Mentoring partnerships also enhance leadership and career development. Our Learning and Organizational Development Team looks for opportunities to build mentoring partnerships into the programs that we design. We have found that both the person who is mentored, and the experienced professional who shares their knowledge and wisdom, benefit from the partnership. The feedback is consistent that learning takes place on both sides of the partnership. With many workforces currently comprised of four distinct generations working together, mentoring is a wonderful tool to help build an inclusive, diverse workplace.
 
Building a health culture rich with tradition and a diverse portfolio of practice requires strong talent management programs which encourage continuous learning and relearning of best practices. We look forward to building a workforce ready and well-equipped for the challenges ahead. We encourage each of our associates to consider their career plans, have continuous discussions with leaders and take the necessary steps for growth. That includes fully participating in every learning opportunity that comes their way. At the same time, we encourage our experienced leaders to teach and mentor others following in their footsteps.
 


NSU-COM attendees at the September 27 kickoff cocktail reception at Avanté at Boca Raton included (l-r) Dr. Cheryl Atherley-Todd, assistant professor of family medicine; Dr. Kenya Rivas-Velasquez, assistant professor of geriatrics, Dr. Hady Masri, assistant professor of geriatrics; Dr. Michelle Duhaney, instructor and geriatric fellow; and Dr. Naushira Pandya.
In September, Nova Southeastern University’s (NSU-COM) Department of Geriatrics partnered with Avanté at Boca Raton in South Palm Beach County to provide medical care to elderly patients residing in the 144-bed facility, which recently became a teaching nursing home. In addition to spearheading the NSU-COM aspects of this symbiotic collaboration, Naushira Pandya, M.D., CMD, professor and chair of the college’s Department of Geriatrics, has taken on the role of medical director at Avanté.
 
Thanks to this new partnership, Avanté residents are receiving enhanced health care thanks to the participation of several NSU-COM faculty members, who visit the nursing home on a weekly basis. Additionally, the facility is serving as a training site for the college’s current geriatric fellow, with plans to incorporate clinical student rotations and residency training opportunities in the near future. The overarching goal of the Avanté-NSU-COM alliance is to provide top-notch training opportunities for geriatric physicians while also bolstering the level of medical care provided to the live-in patients. Another ancillary benefit of the collaboration is that Avanté staff members will have access to newer and more sophisticated approaches to care for the elderly.

 

 



Beginning January 2012, the City of Hollywood will become home to an off-site campus for Barry University. This is Hollywood’s first partnership with an institution of higher education that offers traditional undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs. Barry is the second-largest private, Catholic university in the southeast United States and was recently named one of “America’s Top Colleges” by Forbes magazine.
 
In a move by the city commission, Hollywood’s downtown will become revitalized with Barry students who will occupy the vacant Fire Station located at 421 N. 21st Ave. as part of an “Eds and Meds” economic development strategy that will bring new life to the old building. Federal stimulus dollars provided the seed money for the $1 million build-out, which will be repaid by the university and the Hollywood Community Redevelopment Agency through a 10-year development agreement.
 
Barry, which has its main campus in Miami Shores, will be relocating its anesthesiology and biomedical sciences graduate programs to the renovated space. The new 10,000-square-foot space will be a permanent home for the programs’ faculty, staff and students. In addition to offices, classrooms and a digital lab, the campus will include a simulation center that provides realistic opportunities for students to practice their skills before entering a hospital.
 
“There continues to be a high demand for health care professionals as we all age and live longer, fuller lives,” said Pegge Bell, Ph.D., dean of the College of Health Sciences. The anesthesiology master’s program is geared toward registered nurses who would like to become nurse anesthetists, while the biomedical sciences master’s program prepares aspiring doctors for the rigors of medical and dental school.
 
As one of Hollywood’s newest neighbors, Barry students and faculty will provide the city’s residents with community programs that emphasize prevention, wellness and health education. Throughout the year, health seminars and screenings will be offered at the Fred Lippman Multi-Purpose Center at 2030 Polk St.
 
“We want to be part of the Hollywood community,” said John McFadden, Ph.D., associate dean for the College and an associate professor of anesthesiology. “Not only will our students be learning here, we hope many will live here and enjoy all that Hollywood has to offer.”
 
Barry University offers more than 100 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs in the arts and sciences, business, education, health sciences, human performance and leisure sciences, law, podiatric medicine, public administration, and social work. Some programs are especially designed for the adult learner, with evening and Saturday classes at convenient locations close to work and home. Barry has nearly 25 satellite sites throughout Florida and three sites in the Caribbean.