Center for Healthcare Education

Located at 4000 Park Avenue in Bridgeport, our Center for Healthcare Education is designed to offer students with aspirations in any health-care profession the best possible learning environment to ensure that they are prepared to succeed in the booming health-care industry.

The Center houses both the College of Health Professions and College of Nursing and encompasses 120,000 square feet of exceptional learning facilities in a three-story building on 8.7 acres.

Multi-Professional Education Practice

The Center encourages students and professionals to collaborate on needed services for everyone from pediatric to geriatric populations. Inter-and-intra-professional services include audiology and hearing testing, speech occupational and physical therapy services for stroke clients, physical therapy services to pediatric patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder, exercise science’s Pioneer Performance Center, occupational and speech therapy services for young adults with developmental disabilities in the Monday Night Social group, and occupational therapy driving simulation with CES – RISE students. The modernly designed laboratories are used for both teaching and service delivery thereby benefiting both our students and patients from the community:

• Audiology Clinic
• Motion analysis and human performance labs
• Driving simulator
• Pediatrics Clinic

‌State-of-the-Art Laboratory and Classroom Facilities

In its ongoing effort to provide state-of-the-art education, The College of Nursing has both a skills lab and simulation center that promotes experiential learning in the context of a caring - healing practice environment. The bedside care lab is a 24-bed lab where students are introduced to foundational nursing skills. The students have the opportunity to develop their skills through hands-on interaction with manikins as well as other student learners.

The 8 simulation rooms are set up like hospital rooms. The use of both high and low fidelity manikins allow the students to work in a simulation experience where they can put theory into practice. Simulation provides a safe environment where students can make errors in high risk clinical scenarios without resulting in critical outcomes. There are four debriefing rooms where students and nurse facilitators to discuss the simulation. Our primary care clinic consists of six exam rooms used by our graduate student nurse practitioners to refine their skill set.

The manikins used for these scenarios include:

• Simman 3G, wireless programmable
• Hal, an advanced multipurpose simulator
• Victoria, which offers an authentic automatic delivery
• Super tory, an advanced newborn simulator with active limb motions
• Pediatric Hal with tracking and movement capability

These manikins have blinking eyes with pupil reactions, chest rise and fall, vocal abilities, as well as seizures. In addition heart and lung sounds can be checked and programed. In addition to simulation with the manikins we also use standardized patients.

We have an Anatomage Table that houses a life size display.  It has a human anatomy visualization system with a virtual library of human cadavers. This advance technology allows interactive hands-on participation for students to learn pathophysiology and multiple disease conditions through varying levels of dissections of the virtual 3D real scans.

College of Health Professions Laboratories Shared with the College of Nursing

• Team-based learning auditorium
• Anatomage
• Simulation, hospital skills laboratory and primary care suites by special arrangement

College of Health Professional Laboratories

• Audiology
• OT pediatrics 
• PT neuromuscular 
• PT neuro
• Human anatomy
• OT table top 
• OT home suite
• OT driving simulator
• Speech language pathology 
• Public health
• Athletic training 
• Motion analysis 
• Human performance 

Enhanced Athletic Training, Human Performance and Motion Analysis Labs

The Center’s laboratories provides up-to-the minute learning environments for the exercise science and athletic training programs. These will be used for developing clinical skills and evidence-based practice and to support faculty/student research. The equipment will prepare students for careers in patient care where they will evaluate the physical performance of individuals with injuries and chronic conditions.

Pioneer Performance Center

The Pioneer Performance Center offers body composition analysis, Alter-G training, concussion assessment, performance analysis, biochemical analysis, nutritional counseling, and exercise training. PPC is also a proud partner of the Employee Wellness Program at Sacred Heart University and offers a variety of group exercises classes for employees.

Team-Based Learning Auditorium

The Center’s multipurpose amphitheater is available for group discussions and will expand the capacity for problem-based tutorials. The building also serves as a site to host professional development activities for healthcare providers in the community and will be the center for coordinating community-based programming supported by our Colleges, such as global health and service-learning activities.