The 10,000 square foot center by Corewell Health includes classrooms, a virtual reality room, simulated patient rooms, a bio skills lab and more.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Grand Rapids is now home to a high-tech medical training lab through Corewell Health.
The Corewell Health Clinical Simulation Center, located at 275 Michigan Street NE, contains 10,000 square feet of medical innovation.
Dr. Allison Hoppe, a third-year surgical resident, moved a scope on an augmented reality simulator. She was performing a virtual colonoscopy, looking for lesions.
“To be able to get the hand-eye coordination of everything and the feel of the scope before you’re in the human body is very helpful,” said Hoppe.
She joked the simulator is actually “harder than actually doing” colonoscopies, which she called great for training.
This simulator is just one of the features of the clinical simulation lab. It is one machine of many in a bioskills lab, with augmented reality simulators for multiple surgeries and techniques. There is also an interactive virtual reality room, two simulated patient rooms, two classrooms and more.
“It’s all very high technology, something that we didn’t have probably 10 years ago,” said Pam Jager, clinical simulation supervisor. “It used to be an apprenticeship model, so they would follow their attending physician around and learn from patients, very slowly, and it was all safe. But this provides us more technology, so that our residents in training can come here and learn and train on these simulators before they even go into the patient care setting and work on a patient.”
The clinical simulation lab is connected to Corewell Health’s Butterworth campus via skybridge. The lab opened in November of 2024.
13 ON YOUR SIDE also watched as staff used the virtual reality room during an exercise. The goal was to find 22 errors in the patient’s room.
“We can really turn this room into any setting we want,” said Jager. “You can come into the setting here, and it’s real. It feels real.”
Jager called the investment into education and training “incredible.” She said it is simplifying training for the medical staff at Corewell Health.
“Many times we would have to send our physicians out of state, away from the area, to get the training that they need,” said Jager. “We are hoping that we can bring some of that training here to Grand Rapids.”
There is still available space in the center for future development. Jager said they are looking to build both a surgical robotics lab and a telerobotics lab. They expect to receive a da Vinci robot for surgical robotic training soon.
Inside Corewell Health’s clinical simulation center
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