How our new Clinical and Multiprofessional Skills Suite will enhance students learning experience

The School of Health has recently secured £2 million from the Office for Students, which will ensure our growing student community has access to the specialist teaching facilities needed for their courses.

Leeds Beckett University has provided an additional £7 million of funding towards the new Clinical and Multiprofessional Skills Suite, and further Biomedical Sciences teaching laboratory.

The Clinical and Multiprofessional Skills Suite will house two ten-bed hospital wards and a fully immersive three-bedroom hospital simulation space housing three simulation manikins. It will also accommodate an anatomy study space with a state-of-the-art life-size virtual dissection table, and a built-in living suite for simulation and practice in a home-like environment.

Hear from our heads of subjects to hear how these facilities will benefit students in their subject areas.

Dietetics, Environmental Health and Nutrition

“The new clinical skills suite facilities will benefit our students within Nutrition, Health and the Environment in many ways. Simulated clinical environments such as ‘wards’, ‘two-way mirrors’ to view patient consultations and projection simulation facilities that transport our students into different clinical scenarios are part of our new resource! They provide safe and effective learning environments that give opportunities for skills practice before clinical placements and work experience. The advantages this can offer for confidence and practice of skills is huge. We have the ability to offer more practical based learning that can only advantage our students in the workplace.”

• Dr Helen White, Head of Subject

Nursing

“These facilities will provide our Nursing and Healthcare students and apprentices with an ideal opportunity to simulate learning in a safe and supported environment with our academic staff. The facilities will replicate clinical settings and contexts, giving our students and apprentices outstanding hands-on experience for what they will face in their professional practice. “

• Dr James Woodall, Head of Subject

Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy and Sport and Exercise Therapy

“The new ‘Clinical and Multiprofessional Skills Suite’ will be an exciting new facility that will prepare our students for their forthcoming practice placements and for graduate employment. It uses ‘simulated learning’ to enable students to further develop communication and technical skills in a controlled environment before they work in those actual working environments in the future. By doing so it will improve their clinical reasoning and problem-solving skills.

This Skills Suite provides a range of rooms and settings that can reflect where occupational therapists, physiotherapists and sports & exercise therapists would work in a wide variety of geographical settings.

The new ‘immersive suite’ will project life-size images to recreate environments outside of the classroom. Examples could be the household sitting room, hospital settings, sports settings or public places. Students can envisage and role-play how they would react to specific clinical scenarios to help and support others and so to prepare them for their future professional roles

The two ten-bedded hospital bays and side ward will enable students to transfer theory to practice before they set foot on a real-life ward.

The ‘Community Suite’ provides the context of the home setting. Students can learn how to optimise independence for those who are having difficulty coping in the home setting or to learn how to facilitate safe and early discharge home from hospital.

Each will consolidate theory into practice.”

• Dr James Milligan, Head of Subject

Our new Clinical and Multiprofessional Skills Suite is expected to be complete in August 2022.