Mar. 2—Frederick Community College on Wednesday unveiled its newly renovated health sciences facility, complete with labs meant to mimic acute care units, operating rooms and delivery rooms.

Linganore Hall has been undergoing extensive renovations since the summer of 2021, FCC President Annesa Cheek said Wednesday. The county and state dedicated a combined $11.4 million toward the project, which remodeled 75% of the building, she said.

The facility houses FCC’s health sciences programs, including nursing, respiratory care, surgical technology and more. With the renovations complete, students in those programs can practice in rooms outfitted with the same hospital beds, ventilators and other tools they’ll eventually use on the job.

In a pair of rooms referred to as the “simulation labs,” students can practice on high-tech mannequins while their instructors watch from behind sheets of one-way glass. The mannequins breathe and have steady pulses, and they can blink, bleed, sweat and cry. Students can administer IVs to them and perform CPR on them.

Instructors control the mannequins’ vitals and voices and respond to the students’ actions. If a student administers the correct dosage of medication, for instance, they’ll see the patient respond positively. But if they get something wrong, the mannequins’ vitals can plummet.

In one of the simulation labs, students can deliver mannequin babies. Instructions can simulate a short, easy birth or a longer and more complex one. And they can stop labor at any time to talk students through things for which they might need more practice.

“She’s pretty cool,” said Michaela Roloff, an obstetrics instructor at FCC, gesturing to the mother mannequin and her infant. “I wish I had something like this in nursing school.”

A piston mechanism inside the mother pushes the baby through the birth canal.

Since instructors can change the scenario at any moment, students get practice responding to unexpected patient needs in real time, Roloff said.

The labs also ensure they know what to expect in a clinical setting — even with small things, like how to operate the specialized birthing beds.

“The first time you walk into a hospital room, and you’ve got a sick patient, and lines and tubes and buzzers going off, it can be overwhelming,” said Amelia Iams, who manages FCC’s Physical Therapist Assistant program. “We’re preparing our students to be comfortable in that space.”

Down the hall from the simulation rooms on Wednesday, Iams gave county officials a tour of a space designed to look like an outpatient rehabilitation facility. Students in her program can use the space to practice exercise techniques, how to safely move patients and more.

The new Linganore Hall also includes an “operating room,” complete with mannequins whose abdomens open to reveal a model set of organs. Students there can also practice sterilization techniques.

There’s an acute care lab, too, where students from different fields can work together like they would in a real hospital.

Sandy McCombe Waller, FCC’s dean of health, business, technology and science, said she believes the college was the only one in the state to design its training spaces “based on setting, not discipline.”

“This isn’t the nursing lab or the respiratory lab,” she said. “It’s an interprofessional space. … We’re proud of that, and it was intentional.”

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