Aston University opens £1.5m simulation hospital wards for healthcare teaching

Aston University has unveiled a new £1.5m healthcare teaching facility, featuring two interconnecting five-bed hospital wards and an immersive interactive room. The facility, funded by the Office for Students, is designed to provide realistic, hands-on training for nursing, physician associate, pharmacy, and medical students.

The wards, equipped with hospital-grade furniture and headwalls, allow students to simulate real-world scenarios, including power cuts and patient emergencies. Each ward includes nursing stations, storage for consumables, hoists for patient movement—including a ceiling-mounted option for bariatric patients—and diverse manikins to represent various patient demographics. Notably, the facility includes the UK’s first bariatric manikin with a black skin tone, further enhancing inclusivity in training.

An isolation area within one ward enables students to practice caring for patients with infectious diseases, complete with an anteroom for hand hygiene and surgical preparation. The immersive room adds versatility by replicating hospital, domestic, and outdoor environments, offering additional support for Aston’s new mental health nursing programme, which begins in September 2025.

The facility’s high-tech design includes cameras to record simulations for playback during debrief sessions or livestreaming for broader student discussions.

Professor Liz Moores, deputy dean of the College of Health and Life Sciences, said: “The new wards represent further progress towards Aston University’s aim to become a leading provider of healthcare education. We want our students to be well-prepared even before they go out on their first placements. The new facilities will enable us to simulate a wide variety of scenarios. The immersive room will also enhance our ability to provide innovative and fun teaching that the students will enjoy and remember.”

Dr Jason Wouhra, the University’s new chancellor, officially opened the facility, calling it “breathtaking” and noting its value for fostering practical skills and entrepreneurial mindsets. He added: “The more immersive we can make our training and the more we can foster entrepreneurial mindsets in our students, the higher chance they have of succeeding and making a difference to wider society.”