LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The University of Louisville plans a $280 million building on its Health Sciences Campus downtown only a block away from the new tower under construction for U of L Hospital.
Tentatively planned to open in 2027, the "Health Sciences Simulation Center and Collaboration Hub" will serve U of L's four health sciences schools — medicine, dental, nursing and public health — and will greatly increase the nursing school's capacity to produce graduates, U of L officials have told the state legislature.
"It's a game-changer for us," U of L President Kim Schatzel told the board of the university's foundation during a meeting Wednesday.
Schatzel said the building will help address a "huge shortage" of nurses, estimated at 6,000 in Kentucky alone, by increasing the nursing school's capacity 50%.
U of L's nursing school graduated 281 nurses and nurse practitioners in the 2022-23 academic year, university spokesman John Karman said.
Planned for the southeast corner of East Chestnut and South Preston streets, the building is the university's top request for capital funding in Kentucky's two-year state budget, which lawmakers in Frankfort are hashing out over the next couple of months.
The current version of the budget unveiled by the House's controlling GOP caucus provides $260 million in state dollars, which will be raised by selling bonds, to the project. U of L would fund the remaining $20 million by selling its own bonds.
U of L officials have their fingers crossed that the funding — the single-largest capital project for a state university in the two-year budget — survives legislative maneuvering as the spending plan is finalized.
"Until that gavel falls, we're not done," Schatzel told the foundation board. "So we'll be up there (in Frankfort) next week and we'll continue to be able to provide a compelling value proposition in terms of why we need that building."
One factor contributing to a nationwide shortage of nurses is that nursing students must complete clinical rotations in hospitals and other real-world healthcare settings, but with fewer nurses on the job, those training hours are harder to come by, Schatzel said.
"They don't have enough nurses on the floor, so when they're taking in nursing students to do the clinical rotations, they take in less. So now you have this death spiral that just goes on," she said.
Much of the new building will be dedicated to "simulation" training via high-tech but artificial environments using virtual reality, mannequins and video tools. Schatzel said the university will take advantage of nursing accreditation standards that allow for up to half of clinical training to be done via simulation.
Space at the new building "will be engineered for simulations that include teams from across the health care training spectrum, from operating rooms and intensive care units to telehealth and virtual education," according to a fact sheet U of L has distributed to lawmakers.
The new building will also have research laboratories to serve the university's 17 health sciences centers and institutes and a conference center that will create "a prominent front door to HSC campus for the Louisville health and business communities to convene programming that connects learners, industry, researchers and community."
