El Centro College Center for Allied Health and Nursing
(located in the Paramount Building, downtown Dallas)
- The El Centro College Center for Allied Health and Nursing features 55 classrooms, laboratories and other learning venues that can broadcast audio and video of live classes, record lessons for future viewing and create podcasts of class sessions. The facility has multiple pan/tilt/zoom cameras that capture video of activities in each of those 55 rooms; equipment also includes microphone systems with stationary, portable and area microphones to capture audio.
- The high-tech facilities offer projection systems in all classrooms and labs that can display the camera views; as a result, all in-room or off-campus students can see displayed technical devices or anatomical models from a "best seat in the house" perspective.
- Three classrooms provide Tandberg video conferencing capability for off-campus classroom, two-way viewing.
- Two simulation labs have computerized patient mannequins; the labs are separated by a control room that can control the mannequins and simulate changing patient conditions. In these rooms, two multichannel video recorders can document student performance as they respond to a patient’s changing conditions.
- Students can work and learn in four operating rooms with the multichannel video recording capability that tracks them as they move from storage areas to scrub-in stations, to OR rooms and to decontamination areas. Student performance and sterile technique can be recorded and reviewed by the instructor and student.
- Medical assistant students work in a classroom that actually is a simulated physician's office; this setting allows instructors to monitor a student’s performance and record those activities for later viewing.
- Students also learn methods and practice in a medical records classroom that can simulate the latest in medical record technology.
- A specialized cross-sectional anatomy lab, designed by one of El Centro’s faculty members, enables teachers to demonstrate anatomical models.
- The facility also includes a respiratory therapy classroom/lab that can simulate and demonstrate the latest life support technology.
- Radiology, echocardiology, sonography and invasive cardiovascular labs are equipped with state-of-the-art equipment that rivals most modern health care facilities; each offers broadcasting and recording stations.
- Special labs for practicing CPR, medication administration and general medical skills give students hands-on experience in those areas.
- On the first floor of the building, new features also include a specialized testing and computer lab monitored by multichannel surveillance camera systems from a central control station; and an admissions office for new student information and counseling.
For more information about the El Centro College Center for Allied Health and Nursing, contact Sondra Flemming, ECC vice president of health and legal studies/workforce and continuing education, at (214) 860-2141; or Dr. LaCheeta McPherson, ECC executive dean of health and legal studies, at (972) 860-5097.
For more information about the technology in the facility, call Tuck Minnett, ECC faculty director of distance learning, at (214) 860-2313.