Photo Caption: Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, and dignitaries cut the ribbon April 25 for the Jump Trading Simulation and Education Center at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria.

By: By Jennifer Willems, The Catholic Post

When ground was broken for the new Jump Trading Simulation and Education Center at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Sister Judith Ann Duvall said she asked God to give them the wisdom and the courage and the creativity to complete what he had inspired in them.

“Just look. Indeed he has,” said Sister Judith Ann, major superior of The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, just before the $51 million virtual hospital was blessed and dedicated by Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, CSC, on April 25.

Affectionately called Jump, the center is a collaboration between OSF HealthCare and the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria (UICOMP). It combines medical equipment and the latest simulation technology to provide better education and performance training for students, physicians, nurses and other medical professionals, as well as research.

The goal is to improve patient health outcomes and lower health care costs.

“What we have built together is something truly wonderful and literally transformational,” Sister Judith Ann said. “The education that will occur here, the research that will occur here, the innovation that will take place is not going to bless only our Peoria community, not only the State of Illinois, not only the United States, but could in many ways bless the world.”

She cited the vision, foresight, commitment and “unbelievable generosity” of those who share the religious community’s passion to care for human life. Sister Judith Ann singled out the University of Illinois College of Medicine and Dr. Mary and Bill DiSomma of Chicago, “who have truly, truly blessed our OSF family and enabled our Sisters to see a way that they could achieve and provide the greatest care and love in ways we could never have imagined would be possible.”

The DiSommas and the DiSomma Family Foundation donated $25 million to the project, but didn’t want their names to be used. Rather, the center bears the name of the Chicago-based trading firm in which Bill DiSomma is a managing partner.

GIVING AND RECEIVING
Kevin Schoeplein, CEO of OSF HealthCare, said he expects the traffic to go both ways between Jump and the rest of the health care community.

“Our own providers and their patients will benefit from these virtual labs and high tech tools, but just as often our professionals will be the ones sharing their considerable expertise and learned experiences with other health care systems and clinicians throughout the country through the work done here at Jump,” he said, pledging to be proactive in sharing the knowledge gleaned there because “best practices and clinical innovation are meant to be shared.”

The use of the word “Jump” is significant, he added.

“That is precisely what will happen to medicine and health care education in this city,” according to Schoeplein. “We will be moving forward, not with infant steps but with great leaps and jumps that will lead us into the rewarding future.”

Dr. Sara Rusch, regional dean of the University of Illinois College of Medicine, said she looks forward to how the new facilities, including the manikins and other technology, will improve communication with the patient. It will also allow OSF Saint Francis and UICOMP to recruit and maintain the best students, residents and practicing physicians.

The six-story facility includes a virtual intensive care unit, trauma room and patient rooms, a skills lab that can accommodate 24 work stations, innovation and performance improvement laboratories and a conference center with a 250-person auditorium and 75-person lecture hall.

Information provided by OSF HealthCare indicated that 500 simulation trainings for physicians, clinicians and first responders are scheduled in Jump’s first six months, and more than 500 events will take place there.
Before he sprinkled holy water throughout the facility’s ground floor, Bishop Jenky urged people to remember the foundation for it all.

“The foundation comes from the Franciscan charism and everything done here is truly a ministry and apostolate where God is served and reverenced and worshipped by the ways students will be educated, doctors and nurses will learn, and eventually in the many ways the sick will be cared for,” he said.