Size: 12,200 sf
Project team: Svigals + Partners; Consulting Engineering Services; Shawmut Design and Construction
Completion date: Fall 2018

New Haven, CT -- The Yale School of Nursing is celebrating the opening of its new Simulation Lab and classroom expansion. The new, state-of-the-art teaching spaces are designed to "help prepare future Yale nurses to address where health care is going, such as outpatient, disaster, and telehealth care,” said Ann Kurth, dean of the Yale School of Nursing. The project transformed the space in less than one year, readied in time for the 2018 fall semester’s start.

The teaching center design integrates two new classrooms with a primary care assessment lab as well as six standardized patient examination rooms with digital capture and playback. It also offers a one-bedroom apartment layout used for home-care simulation that doubles as a psychiatric simulation lab. Additional upgrades went toward improving the Center for Biobehavioral Health Research and a café on the first floor of the building.

Throughout the design process, the Svigals team was presented with a number of challenges that required creative solutions. For example, the layout had to adjust to the unique structural conditions of the existing building, and ensure the newly renovated space, was homogeneous with the overall design of the campus.

As a result of the careful considerations and attention to the campus’ integrity, the design team was able to create a high fidelity standardized patient area, allowing students the opportunity to be as close as they can to real world experience while still being in an educational setting that allows for close observation and critique.

The project leaders included faculty member and Simulation Lab director Ginger Sherrick, as well as Yale’s associate dean for finance & administration, Marcia Thomas. School officials announced the renovations and their expanded ability for students to learn through highly immersive patient encounters in a realistic primary care setting, with live standardized “patients” -- actors trained to behave and respond as patients for standardized simulation scenarios.

The students, many who go on to serve as APRNs and healthcare leaders, also gain exposure to a wide variety of nursing specialties.

Photography by Carl Vernlund.