PROVIDENCE – Women & Infants Hospital recently unveiled the area’s only hospital-based simulation center dedicated exclusively to the needs of women and newborns.

At an open house for the new center, the hospital dedicated a new piece of equipment, the LAP Mentor Simulator, in memory of long-time obstetrician/gynecologist and laparoscopic surgeon, Dr. Roger Ferland, who died in 2008.

“Simulation-based medical education helps learners achieve confidence and competence through repetitive practice using tools that are incredibly realistic and life-like,” said Dr. G. Jesse Bender III, co-director of the simulation program. “Women & Infants has incorporated simulation into its education program for years as a method of keeping our practitioners advanced in the field and providing the safest, most-effective, most-empathetic and state-of-the-art patient care possible.” •