Cliff Clark, CEO of Discovery Point Franchising, Inc., decided to honor his wife Diane, who passed in 2012, by making a multi-year lead gift to name the new patient simulation, education and safety center at Northside Hospital Gwinnett after Diane.
Increasing patient acuity, technology, cost containment, and focus on safety have changed traditional workplace education models in graduate medical education. Textbook information is certainly the foundation for quality patient care practice, but true physician training must also include hands on training for common, unexpected and complex patient care scenarios. Simulation allows the learner to safely apply textbook knowledge to the world of real patient scenarios.
The new space provides sufficient simulator rooms designed for the variety of practice settings found in the hospital, such as a Labor and Delivery room, an Emergency Department Trauma room, a Medical-Surgical department room, an OR, and a Critical Care room. Realism is an essential requirement of effective simulation training, because the human mind doesn’t transfer learning very well from a clearly “fake” environment to the “real” environment. Simulations by definition require the replication of nearly all of the essential aspects of a clinical situation. That’s the reason why airlines and the military have relied heavily on simulation to train their team members to perform reliably and safely.
On July 12, 2021, senior leaders from Northside Hospital Gwinnett joined Cliff Clark in the dedication of the new Clark Simulation, Education and Safety Center. The dedication of this center demonstrates the commitment that Northside Hospital has to training physicians for the future of the county.
