Mayo Clinic simulation center receives accreditation

The 10,000-square foot facility on Mayo’s Florida campus includes a new procedural and surgical skills training lab.


The Mayo Clinic has joined the ranks of healthcare organizations operating simulation centers that meet the highest quality standards for excellence in the areas of teaching and education.

The J. Wayne and Delores Barr Weaver Simulation Center, located on Mayo’s Jacksonville, Fla., campus, is one of only 100 such centers in the world to be accredited through the Society for Simulation in Healthcare.

“The accreditation not only shows our commitment to education, it also elevates our platform for educating allied health staff and providers, so we continue to meet and exceed the needs of our patients,” said Kristin Rosenbush, the center's manager of operations.

Opened in 2013, the center recently received the SSH accreditation after a peer-reviewed, customized evaluation of its teaching and education processes and outcomes. The 10,000-square-foot facility includes designated areas for procedural and surgical task training, an operating room, hospital and outpatient exam rooms, an emergency medicine suite and classroom, as well as debriefing space.

Also See: Intermountain simulation center offers real-world training to clinicians

Last year, the center—which links with Mayo's simulation centers in Phoenix and Rochester, Minnesota—provided 27,000 hours of medical training for its physicians, residents, students, nurses and allied health professionals, as well as for trainees from other healthcare organizations.

According to Mayo, the center’s simulation rooms are “replicas with the same, look, and feel of current clinical space to ensure realistic learning experiences” and all rooms are fully integrated with “audio-visual system, one-way viewing mirrors, vital-sign monitors, 50-inch monitors for projection of learning aides, and contain fully functioning medical gas supply and lighting.”

The center also utilizes clinical training systems such as a cardiopulmonary patient simulator, endoscopy-colonoscopy virtual reality trainer, laparoscopic virtual reality trainer, robotic virtual reality trainer, ultrasound trainer, as well as a birthing simulator.

“Simulation has huge impacts on patient care—it fosters communication, teamwork, safety, confidence and best practices,” added Leslie Simon, DO, the center’s medical director. “Standardization of our processes through accreditation has only made us better at what we do, helping to make Mayo Clinic the safest possible place to be a patient.”

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