Investing in future nurses with high-tech teaching tool
Northern Regional Hospital unveils Anatomage Table
Investing in future nurses with high-tech teaching tool
Mount Airy, NC – Northern Regional Hospital, a nationally recognized leader for quality patient care, is equally known for its visionary educational programs to encourage the development of future healthcare professionals. In keeping with those dual missions, Northern is pleased to unveil its new Anatomage Table – an advanced technological teaching tool that takes anatomy out of the textbook and into 3D digital human bodies with the highest level of detail and available.
Northern Regional Hospital is the only hospital in the greater Piedmont region to offer such an advanced teaching tool. The Hospital’s Anatomage Table was purchased with grant assistance.
Focus on Nursing Education & Community Enrichment
“We are delighted to offer the Anatomage Table as another innovative teaching tool to help introduce and entice young and older students to exciting and fulfilling careers in healthcare,” said Chris A. Lumsden, President and Chief Executive Officer of Northern Regional Hospital. “We are fully committed to further enhance patient care and safety by helping educate and train the next generation of healthcare providers. Northern`s numerous educational initiatives, combined with expanded employee educational assistance and scholarship programs, have bolstered interest in healthcare careers, helped existing employees achieve their professional goals, and improved patient care while enriching our community,” added Lumsden.
“The Anatomage Table takes advantage of many facets of digital learning – which is the primary way students learn today,” said Daniel Combs, RN, BSN, CEN, NREMT-P, Staff Development & Student Programs Nurse at Northern. “Think of the table as a supercomputer with two large screens,” he says. “Students tap and swipe to view and interact with more than 2,500 anatomical structures in each digital body,” adds Combs, “Easily peeling away the layers of the body to see the relationship of organs, bones, muscles, veins, and nerves; as well as view the movement of body parts and functionality of bodily systems, such as blood flow within the circulatory system.
“The accuracy and vividness of the Anatomage Table’s hi-tech features should be particularly helpful to nursing students – especially those struggling with their required ‘Anatomy & Pathology’ course,” suggests Robin Hodgin, RN, BSN, MHA, NE-BC, Senior Vice President, and Chief Nursing Officer at Northern. “The 3D views of structures and systems within the body will improve students’ understanding of human anatomy,” she said. “In some respects, the knowledge gained from a ‘virtual dissection’ performed on the Anatomage ‘bodies’ may be superior to a cadaveric dissection.”
Training Super Users to Facilitate Learning Sessions
“Over the next few weeks, we plan to invite all staff to see how this teaching tool may help enhance their clinical efforts or specialty re-certification requirements. We will then begin to incorporate the Table into a variety of existing educational programs,” said Combs.
Some of the educational efforts benefitting from the addition of the Anatomage Table to their programs include the Hospital’s ongoing sponsorship of high school and middle school HOSA- Future Health Professionals groups; a new “Project Lead the Way” class called “Medical Detectives” for 7th-grade students; the hospital-developed “Camp Med”; and an upcoming after-school program for middle-school students interested in exploring careers in healthcare. “Our hope is to spark a love of healthcare at an early age – which may then translate into those young students completing their education and returning to Northern Regional Hospital as nurses and allied-health professionals,” said Lumsden.
