At midday, the mayor of Sant Cugat and president of the Barcelona Provincial Council, Mercè Conesa, opened the new Clinical Simulation Unit of the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC Barcelona). It comprises an area of 1,000 square metres dedicated to providing a training centre for clinical skills to develop the abilities of graduate and postgraduate doctors and nurses.
There are two consulting rooms, four in-patient wards with 16 cubicles, an operating theatre with four cubicles, an intensive care unit with four cubicles, a lecture hall for 130 people, three multi-purpose rooms and a control room. The unit also has simulators for assessing humans, clinical skills simulators, equipment for procedural activities, clinical software for individual and group training and a video recording system.
The unit permits theoretical knowledge to be integrated with clinical practice in a safe environment without risk to the patient. Throughout these new facilities, professional ethics are applied to all clinical procedures, the capacity for practical decision-making and the communication skills required for an ideal relationship between the doctor or nurse and the patient.
At the ceremony, the mayor of Sant Cugat congratulated the University for “its courage in launching a centre of this nature as the students will come out of it much better trained”. For his part, the Rector of UIC Barcelona, el Dr Xavier Gil, said that “facilities such as this enable our professionals to provide patients with even better treatment which is our commitment to society”. Dr Albert Balaguer, Dean of the university's Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, maintained that “these new facilities reflect our desire to continue promoting active and practical training for healthcare professionals and fostering patient safety”.
