A gift from Dr. John G. Beard and the Alabama Nurses Foundation will help to provide equipment for a nursing simulation lab in Troy University’s new Jones Hall, which is nearing completion on the Troy Campus.

The building, named in honor of Crowne Health founder and CEO Billy Jones and his wife Frances, will be home to programs in the College of Health Sciences, including the School of Nursing.

In recognition of the gift, the lab will be named the John G. Beard Family/Alabama Nurses Foundation Nursing Simulation Lab.

“We are truly grateful for the financial gift to the School of Nursing from the Alabama Nurses Foundation and the John Beard Family,” said Dr. LaGary Carter, Dean of the College of Health Sciences. “The monies will certainly make a positive impact on teaching efficacy and student success. We are honored by their generosity and support.”

The Alabama Nurses Foundation was established in 1984 for the purpose of serving the nursing profession in the state through educational support, research grants and benevolent assistance to nurses in crisis. Through the years, the organization has provided scholarships related to nursing education and community grants for qualifying projects initiated by nurses. In 2015, the “Nurses Save Lives” specialty care tags was approved by the Alabama Legislature, and due to the tag’s popularity, the ANF has been able to increase its efforts to include assisting schools of nursing in the purchase of advanced simulation equipment to better prepare students for the clinical setting.

“We realize that nurse educators and schools of nursing are the core of keeping the workforce healthy and solid with the flow of competent nurses,” said Dr. John Ziegler, Executive Director of the Alabama Nurses Foundation. “As we know from national statistics, there is a constant need for nurses. With the advanced simulation equipment, students are not just being trained in a cohort of five or 10 students, but their individual competencies are being measured. It really helps the nurse educators and students develop high competencies before they are in situations where they are saving lives and responsible for patients. We are very proud to participate in that with TROY.”

Simulation-based education has become a vital way to prepare future nurses for what they will experience in the clinical setting, said John Beard, President of the ANF Board of Trustees.

“The Alabama Nurses Foundation collects money from our distinctive automobile tag and what we have predominantly used that for is for scholarships, but we have also allocated some of our tag money to help nursing schools with clinical educational tools such as simulation,” Beard said. “For a number of years, nursing schools have been building up their simulation capabilities using these high tech mannequins.”

Gifts such as the one ANF has made to TROY will enable students to build stronger clinical competency before they are dealing hands-on with patients.

“The feeling is that as students take part in these simulations, they will become more competent in dealing with their patients when they are at their clinical sites,” Beard said. “In building the new building at TROY, we saw that one of the things to be included was a simulation lab and that is why we decided to help in that effort. When you think about the staffing issues going on in both hospitals and nursing homes, it really creates a necessity for the nursing schools to give the students as much training as they can so that when they go into those clinical sites, they do so having learned and prepared as much as they possibly can.”