UTICA — SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s College of Health Sciences has added a brand new state-of-the-art pelvic simulator to its nursing program. Procured through a SUNY Performance Improvement grant meant to help address the urgent nurse shortage, this high-tech $57,000 simulator is designed to replicate the female pelvic exam and provide real-time feedback to students and faculty, enabling on-demand training.

The simulator will be used primarily in the Family Nurse Practitioner graduate program’s advancedhealth assessment course to help support student learning in a controlled environment before entering the clinical setting. In addition, it will also be available for use as part of the undergraduate student nursing health assessment course.

Overall, it will offer students the opportunity to gain additional practice with pelvic exams, something which is extremely important due to the limited access to clinical placements for Women’s Health.

“This new pelvic simulator will be a key tool for students to get the training they need to find success in this important and demanding field,” said Dr. Joanne Joseph, interim dean of SUNY Poly’s College of Health Sciences. “Use of this device will help meet the needs of the region’s healthcare system by providing students with the ability to practice pelvic exams, and to do so in a controlled educational environment that will allow them to gain the skills required to feel comfortable addressing clinical situations.”

The simulator also provides students and faculty with valuable feedback regarding accuracy and pain/pressure measures. All SUNY Poly undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in the Health Assessment, Advanced Health Assessment, Women’s Health and Primary Care courses will be able to use the simulator with faculty supervision.

The procurement of the simulator comes after SUNY Poly and Jefferson Community College in Watertown announced that each institution received $125,000 in funding from SUNY as part of an overall $250,000 award to strengthen the registered nursing (RN) pipeline, improve graduate retention rates in the RN and BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) programs, and develop a seamless pathway for RNs to pursue BSN, MSN (Master of Science in Nursing) and DNP (Doctor of Nursing Practice) programs at SUNY Poly.

By providing students with the latest hands-on experiences and advanced technologies, the effort also seeks to improve graduation rates in the RN and BSN programs to immediately supply qualified RNs and BSNs to deploy into the community through the hiring of a student success coordinator/tutor/education and career counselor at SUNY Poly.