Hidden underneath the grandeur of Huntsman Hall and the aura surrounding Penn's Ivy League status, Penn possesses a jewel that the Nursing School calls its own.
The Brunner Instructional Technology Center is a lab that includes a variety of high-tech equipment intended to provide Nursing students and faculty with hands-on learning opportunities in patient care.
"It teaches you a lot of the skills you need to use on the hospital floors," Nursing senior Patricia Underwood says.
The lab, located in the Nursing Education Building, contains equipment costing up to $40,000 and is one of only a handful of similar setups in the country.
"We're in the business of educating nurses," Director of Brunner Lab Angela Iorianni-Cimbak says.
Lab equipment includes bedside monitors, an intra-aortic balloon pump, an intravenous virtual-reality program, simulators, an anesthesia machine, an incubator, cardiac defibrillators and electrocardiograms.
Using these devices, students are taught critical skills in an interactive process -- including how to insert an IV, how to address chest pain and hemorrhages and how to deal with the uncertainty of patient care. This training allows students to "experience crisis before it happens," Iorianni-Cimbak says.
The lab is used by both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as Nursing faculty. In addition, certain partners in the Penn community -- such as the University Health System's division of nursing, and certain departments within the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia -- can use the Brunner Lab.
"When you put your theoretical knowledge into practice it helps to reinforce what you learn in class," says Nursing junior Grace Paik, who, like all other juniors, uses the lab regularly.
The lab equipment addresses the needs of pediatrics, midwifery, gerontology and other nursing divisions. Debra Abraham, Iorianni-Cimbak's assistant and a Nursing seminar leader, put it aptly: The lab "goes across all continuums -- from womb to tomb."
One of the most impressive pieces of equipment is SimMan, a mannequin that can be programmed to display a heartbeat and pulse, speak and otherwise simulate a real human patient. According to Iorianni-Cimbak, Penn was the first school of nursing in the country to get SimMan.
"It's a big, expensive toy," Abraham says.
SimMan is controlled by an external laptop, through which instructors program scenarios. For example, SimMan can be programmed to resist nursing care, have its condition improve by proper treatment and suddenly have a heart attack. The student has to learn to react in each of these situations and decide how to best care for the patient.
"This is a much safer and calmer way" to learn patient care, says Kathleen McCauley, professor of cardiovascular nursing.
Brunner Lab was renovated in 1999, when a large donation was made by Lillian and Mathias Brunner, both of whom attended Penn. Since then, the lab has expanded through other private donations, and a separate anesthesia lab has been built.
While other universities -- like Villanova University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County -- have good nursing equipment, according to Iorianni-Cimbak, few have labs as sophisticated as Brunner.
