The University of Tulsa wraps up a roughly year-long renovation project that will bring its health sciences programs downtown.
Nursing and kinesiology are among the programs at the Oxley College of Health Sciences at 12th Street and Boulder Avenue. Dean Dr. Gerard Clancy said the Hurricane Health Clinic will offer primary and preventive care, mental health services, and even legal help to the community beginning in June.
"We knew that there was great demand in the community as well and there's not much downtown, and so this provided an opportunity for us to serve the community with a clinic but at the same time provide opportunities for our patients to actually teach our students," Clancy said.
The clinic is expected to serve 400 patients a month. Clancy said the location puts the near a variety of community aid organizations they hope to help.
"We're also very excited about where we sit as far as the Gathering Place," Clancy said. "We're very close to the Gathering Place, and we hope that our exercise sciences and sports sciences programs can work with the Gathering Place."
The 52,000 square foot space will accommodate more than 600 students across nearly a dozen programs. High-fidelity robots will be a major piece of nursing and medical students' education. They can stand in for real patients in a variety of situations, from a child on a ventilator to an adult having a seizure.
Instructors can control them remotely, giving students real-time problems to solve. All those scenarios will be recorded.
"We review the films afterward to make sure that the students have done it right. Where they haven't done well, we review with them and say, 'This is what you could have done better,'" Clancy said. "So, a lot like what football teams do."
The Oxley College of Health Sciences is in the former BlueCross BlueShield of Oklahoma building.
Note: The University of Tulsa owns KWGS.
