The University of Texas at Arlington
Office of Media Relations

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact: Susan March, (817) 272-2776, march@uta.edu; or Susan M. Slupecki. (817) 272-7078, slupecki@uta.edu

ARLINGTON—An episode featuring The University of Texas at Arlington School of Nursing’s Smart Hospital™ in the PBS documentary series State of Tomorrow™ has been honored with a national award by the American Academy of Nurses.

State of Tomorrow™, which has also received five Lone Star Emmy nominations, is a 13-episode documentary examining how innovators in public higher education are pursuing solutions to challenges in medicine, science, technology, national security and environmental quality.

The episode featuring the Smart Hospital™ aired in the spring and included interviews with School of Nursing Dean Dr. Elizabeth Poster, Smart Hospital™ Manager Dr. Tiffany Holmes, several nursing students and a faculty member interacting with the simulated patients, including a pregnant manikin.

The Smart Hospital™ is a clinical learning center for graduate and undergraduate nursing students who use more than 30 manikins (simulated patients), standardized patients (actors), task trainers and computercase studies of patient conditions/nursing interventions to educate students in acute, trauma, emergency, intensive and primary care interventions. The high-fidelity simulated patients can be programmed to present an array of health care problems across the life span with different degrees of severity and disease variations and actors portray patients and/or family members.

State of Tomorrow™ is a collaboration of the following systems and institutions of public higher education in Texas: Texas A&M University System, Texas State University System, Texas Tech University System, University of Houston System, University of North Texas System and The University of Texas System.

For more information, visit http://www.stateoftomorrow.com/.

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