According to the New York Times, Nursing is listed as the fourth-most-popular major in the Princeton Review’s forthcoming 2009 “Guide to College Majors.”

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Beeping, shouting and flashing; this class room is not for the fainthearted. More reminiscent of an episode of E.R. than a lecture hall, this is a classroom with a difference. Students at Fairfield University’s Nursing School are undertaking their studies in a teaching facility that looks, sounds and feels like a real hospital.

Build at a cost of a million dollars, the center was upgraded with a $35,000 donation from the Kanarek Family Foundation. Robin Kanarek is an alumni of the Fairfield Nursing school and created the foundation with her husband Joe, after their son died of leukemia.

Nursing students of The Robin Kanarek ’96 Learning Resource Center are among the first wave of trainee nurses that are learning their trade in a simulated hospital. The students are given the opportunity to work with real ventilators, electrocardiograms and a host of other medical machinery. The scenarios are dictated by their professors as the students practice on state of the art patient models. The New York Times reports: “They practice on a resilient corps of basic task-training dummies as well as the highly sophisticated $44,000 robotic model known as SimMan.”

As students can’t practice on real patients, SimMan is the next best thing. He gives nursing students a chance to actively learn and apply their knowledge first hand. Working on SimMan is risk free and so students are more eager to practice their skills. Dr. Grossman, who holds a Ph.D. in Nursing Practice, notes to the New York Times that there is a noticeable shift in the student’s behavior. When previously they would draw back and observe procedures, now they step forward and actually do them, thus learning much more.

SimMan is animated by an unseen control room and can sustain any number of injuries, from a gunshot wound to a broken leg. A $100,000 grant from the Connecticut Health and Educational Facilities Authority enabled a woman’s health simulation center to be constructed where SimBaby and Vital Sim Anne can be treated for a multitude of ailments. The process of programming and activating SimMan is complex and time consuming. He is controlled by Dr. Diana Mager, who animates SimMan and even controls his reactions. The New York Times writes: “Bewigged and bedeviled, SimMan may erupt with coughs, wrenching moans and the fevered, guttural plaint of the disoriented patient.”

Other students and professors can watch as trainee nurses treat SimMan in various situations. The experience can be daunting but most students believe the experience is invaluable. Brenda Swanson, who will graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in nursing, says: “Was it a good teaching experience? Absolutely. I won’t forget anything about it.” SimMan is becoming such a recognized learning aid that prospective nursing students are now asking their potential schools: “Do you have a SimMan?”

Associate Dean of Fairfield Nursing School, Suzanne Campbell cites SimMan as the reason for the school’s popularity among nursing students. She says: “We just had 350 prospective students attend an open house that used to draw a hundred at most… We’re serving a job market along with Georgetown, Villanova and Boston College. The big hospitals in New Jersey, New York and Boston are testing nursing applicants with SimMan. And I’d like to think our students will be prepared.”