KEYSER, W.Va. (WV News) — The Potomac State College campus of the West Virginia University School of Nursing has a new faculty member, and her name is Bertha D. Bebe.
The School of Nursing, located in the Kelley Center on the campus of WVU Potomac State College, officially welcomed the addition of a state-of-the-art OB/GYN manikin on Friday, and unveiled the name chosen for her by a collaborative effort of nursing students, the general PSC student population, and the state secretary of Human Resourse.
Final selection of the name was made by Dr. Cynthia Persily, West Virginia’s Secretary of Human Resources, who was on hand Friday to unveil the name.
The addition of the manikin, and baby Jill that came with her, was part of a massive $68 million investment in nursing schools across the state of West Virginia.
Dr. April Shapiro, director of Potomac State’s Nursing Program, said the effort to add the manikin to the local program started in 2021.
“As we were growing the program and getting to a time where we needed something for obstetrics and gynecology, we thought we really needed a high-tech OB/GYN simulator,” she said, adding that she and the OB nurses wrote a proposal to the WVU Foundation.
Shapiro said they had sought a donor for the equipment, but the cost of the highly-technical manikin was prohibitive.
“High fidelity simulators with augmented reality capability and all the electronics you need to work them costs almost $200,000,” she said. “It’s not a small ask.”
Through a bit of good timing, however, the nursing program received some positive news.
“The Nursing Workforce Expansion Program came about in late 2021, and we as a school of nursing applied for financing through the Governor’s office and West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission, with Dr. Cynthia Persily as the vice chancellor of health sciences at the time,” Shapiro explained.
“In 2022, we found out our proposal was accepted, and we were awarded a total of $2 million to expand nursing in the WVU system, to include the purchase of our manikin.”
Shapiro said the manikin will allow the students practice in such areas as pre-partum assessment and care, labor and delivery — both routine and emergency — and post-partum management.
“She has integrated maternal and fetal physiology, and responds automatically in the OB process,” Shapiro said.
In addition, PSC was able to purchase a non-pregnant abdomen for the manikin, so she can be easily refitted and used to simulate non-pregnancy-related health issues.
Shapiro said the manikin is truly one of a kind.
“She’s the world’s first childbirth simulator to offer real-time interactive 3D holograms of her anatomy,” she said.
Once the manikin was obtained and installed in the nursing lab, Shapiro said they wanted to find an appropriate name for the new addition.
“We asked our nursing students to start the selection by entering their choice for the name. Round 2 involved all the Potomac State College students voting.,” she said.
Once that was done, the three finalist names were sent to Dr. Persily, who called the addition of the manikin “the culmination of the most amazing opportunity in my life to really invest in nursing in the state.
“This is the largest investment in nursing that has ever been made in this state in my time, and I believe in recent history,” she said.
Persily said the grant award came at a time when the entire state had been experiencing severe shortages in the nursing profession.
“Gov. Justice heard us, and heard from everyone, about the shortage in nurses at every level … and wanted to help,” she said.
Persily noted that the nursing shortage was made worse by the pandemic in 2020, and so “Gov. Justice entrusted the Higher Education Policy Commission to look at ways we could help to expand the nursing profession in West Virginia.
“The Governor invested $48 million initially of the CARES Act funding,” she said.
As just one result of the influx of funding in the state’s nursing schools, “we were able to increase the number of seats in nursing programs by 875,” she said.
That was the first year of the program. Persily said with the help of Del. Gary Howell and the state legislature, a second round of funding — $20 million — was approved in the second year.
“The goal of the program is after four years to have 2,000 more nurses than we would have if we wouldn’t have invested,” Persily said.
At the conclusion of the program, nursing school instructors Mary Beth McCloud and Heather Coddington, along with junior nursing student Brenna McCloud, demonstrated the birth of Baby Jill, named in honor of Gov. Justice’s daughter.
Among those present for the program were Daryl Cowles, representing Gov. Jim Justice; Del. Gary Howell, various representatives of the college, and students and faculty from the nursing school.
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