Hartwick College to use grant funding for hospital-simulation unit

ONEONTA, N.Y. — Hartwick College will use a $300,000 grant to help fund a new hospital-suite simulation unit for the school’s nursing department.

The grant will help the college “better prepare” its nursing students to enter the field, and add another 10 students to the department, Hartwick said in a news release issued Monday.

Hartwick will put the new equipment in repurposed space in Smith Hall.

The Clark Foundation, headquartered in Cooperstown, awarded the funding, Hartwick said. The grant represents the fourth donation that the Clark Foundation has awarded the school since 2011, the school added.

“We are delighted to be helping Hartwick College further enhance its nursing program,” Jane Forbes Clark, president of the Clark Foundation, said in the release. “This latest funding not only helps grow the size of the program but also deepen the training the nursing students receive so they can be ready to make an immediate impact upon graduation when working at Bassett or other upstate healthcare institutions or systems.”

The Bassett Healthcare Network, which is based in Cooperstown, describes itself as an  “integrated health-care system that provides care and services to people living in an eight county region covering 5,600 square miles in upstate New York,” according to its website.

Founded in 1931, the Clark Foundation is “one of the largest charitable foundations” in the U.S., according to the Hartwick release. The Foundation supports programs and provides grants to various charitable causes in New York City and Cooperstown.

About the unit

The grant funding will help Hartwick replicate a hospital unit, the school said. 

The unit will include four single-bed rooms; an eight-bed room; and a nursing station. It’ll also have technical equipment, including patient-care simulation manikins; computers; cardiac monitors; and instrumentation and supplies.

The space will allow students to learn advanced nursing and problem-solving skills, the school contends.

Students will rotate into this section from their clinical-learning environment at regional health-care facilities. Simulation learning, which is the objective of this suite, will “supplement” the hospital, rehabilitation center, psychiatric unit, and long-term care facility clinical training currently available to Hartwick nursing students, the school said.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com