Students who enroll in Barton Community College’s nursing program have access to state of the art equipment to make sure their experience prepares them to work in the field. Much of this equipment is paid for through donations. The program’s latest hot piece of technology, the SimPad, is no different, as three separate, local foundations came together to purchase one for Barton.
The Barton Foundation, The Golden Belt Foundation and the St. Rose Ambulatory Foundation worked together in 2007 to raise money for the Mary Ann Klein Endowment, which provides scholarships for nursing education, while the interest proceeds that accumulate are used to purchase enhancements for the nursing program.
The three foundations decided to purchase a SimPad with $3,600 of the interest they had received from the endowment. The SimPad hooks up to the programmable “patients” – mannequins the college uses for training exercises in their nursing laboratories.
“The SimPad allows our students to perform assessments on the mannequins, with a much larger variety of simulations,” Director of the Barton’s Nursing Program Dr. Kathy Kottas said.  “They can hear various lung, heart and abdominal sounds and the dummies can actually cough etc.”
The donation couldn’t come at a better time as Kottas said the Nursing Program has its largest class in the programs’ history.
“We have 90 students in first and second level classes, and this is about 10-15 more than previous years,” she said.”
The college is now looking for ways to raise money to replace the remaining old programmable devices so that students don’t have to wait for a group to be finished using the lone SimPad. If the older units begin to fail, the department will really be in a bind, and the quality of experience for students using the SimPad versus the outdated equipment is significant. The department needs five more SimPads to accommodate all of its mannequins.
Executive Director of Business Development Strategy & Foundation for St. Rose Ambulatory & Surgery Center Mark Mingenback said there is great value in working with the other area foundations to support the Barton Nursing Program.
“We believe that this is another example of how we use a community resource, pull together as a team and have a state of the art program, that we as employers and health institutions in the region can depend on for our future labor needs,” he said. “It’s very important to us.”
Golden Belt Foundation Executive Director Christy Tustin said the teamwork among the foundations was excellent.
“It was just a great example of a partnership,” she said.
Barton Foundation Director Darnell Holopirek agreed.
“All of our boards were pleased to do this, and we loved the interaction between the three foundations,” she said.
For more information contact Holopirek at holopirekd@bartonccc.edu or (620) 792-9367.