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About CHIPS

The Center for Healthcare Improvement and Patient Simulation (CHIPS) is a 45,000 square foot stand-alone building for healthcare simulation and interprofessional education.

The state-of-the-art facility opened in 2018 and is designed to meet the simulation needs of all UTHSC students, residents, professional staff, and clinical partners. CHIPS is dedicated to improving the quality of healthcare delivery through education, research, assessment and enhanced clinical skills with standardized patients (actors trained to portray patients), high-fidelity patient simulators (manikins), and virtual reality settings. The building is the only one of its kind in Tennessee and one of only a handful in the country.

CHIPS serves residents and students from the six colleges at UTHSC – Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Health Professions, Nursing, Medicine, and Pharmacy – to train together in simulation settings to develop their skills in delivering team-based health care, which is the proven model for the highest-quality care today. Using the high-tech manikins, standardized patients, and simulated settings, CHIPS offers state-of-the-art training under the safest conditions possible.

Each floor of the three-story building is dedicated to a different aspect of simulation training. The first floor includes skills labs with multiple stations to allow students to focus on clinical skills and assessments.  There is also a simulated home environment, where students can practice delivering in-home patient care and a space dedicated to virtual simulations.  The second floor houses a simulated acute-care setting resembling a hospital environment with patient rooms and a variety of manikins that can be used to simulate everything from surgery to labor and delivery.  The third floor features the Robert J. Kaplan, MD, Center for Clinical Skills and a simulated community pharmacy.  The Kaplan Center includes 24 exam rooms where learners interact with standardized patients to enhance clinical skills, including physical examination, medical history taking, and interpersonal communication. 

May 26, 2022