Facilities

UT Health San Antonio is the largest academic medical center in south Texas and serves a 50,000 square-mile area including the city of San Antonio. It has an approved operating budget of over $1 billion and currently has over 1,600 faculty distributed across 6 schools: Medical, Dental, Nursing, Allied Health, Public Health and Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

The Joe R. & Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio is the largest trainer of physicians in South Texas with more than 900 students and 800 residents.  The UT Health medical practice is the largest vertically integrated medical group in San Antonio and offers a spectrum of health care services ranging from primary care to complex specialty care, including solid organ transplantation, advanced cardiac procedures, and robotic surgery.

The unique, state-of-the-art facilities for point-of-care ultrasound education and research have made UT Health San Antonio a national leader in the field.  The two main facilities dedicated to point-of-care ultrasound and simulation training include the Center for Clinical Ultrasound Education and the H-E-B Clinical Skills Center.

 

Center for Clinical Ultrasound Education

The Long School of Medicine built the Center for Clinical Ultrasound in 2015 to foster interdepartmental and multidisciplinary collaboration to develop innovative educational and research programs in point-of-care ultrasound. The Center is equipped with 10+ ultrasound machines and several simulation models, as well as an integrated audiovisual system to maximize efficiency in training large groups of learners. Healthcare providers from across the UT Health San Antonio campus, as well as visiting clinicians, have benefited from the Center’s educational programs.  To learn more about the Center for Clinical Ultrasound, click here.

HEB Clinical Skills Center

The H-E-B Clinical Skills Center is a modern facility designed to provide expert simulation experiences throughout the medical curriculum that support the development of competence and compassion of healthcare professionals.  The Center has 20 fully-equipped clinical exam rooms simulating a modern clinic setting, 4 large simulation rooms, 3 large classrooms, a simulated operating room, several simulation task trainers, meeting spaces, and its own restrooms, lockers, and other amenities.  The Clinical Skills Center utilizes a state-of-the-art web-based program and high-definition pan-tilt-zoom cameras to digitally record learner sessions.  All cameras and recording functions are managed from a central control room.

For point-of-care ultrasound training, the Clinical Skills Center has large classrooms, 20 full-equipped individual clinical exam rooms, and a robust standardized patient program to supply live models for hands-on ultrasound scanning. Few medical schools have such large, fully equipped facilities available on campus to support point-of-care ultrasound training.

University Health System is the public hospital district for San Antonio that is owned and operated by Bexar County.  University Hospital has been the primary teaching hospital of UT Health San Antonio since both hospital and medical school were founded in 1968.  After a $900 million expansion in 2014, University Hospital has over 700 beds and continues to serve as the regional Level 1 trauma center, as well as a national leader in organ transplantation.  University Hospital continues to expand its facilities with a new Women & Children’s Tower that will add 250 beds in 2022.

Point-of-care ultrasound is used in several capacities throughout University Hospital and Health System. The most active point-of-care ultrasound sites include the critical care units, emergency department, hospital wards, and operating room.  Outpatient subspecialty clinics and procedure suites, such as the interventional pulmonary suite, also utilize point-of-care ultrasound routinely.

The South Texas Veterans Health Care System (STVHCS) serves a growing population of approximately 300,000 Veterans residing in South and Central Texas. The main hospital of the STVHCS is the Audie L. Murphy VA Hospital, which is the primary VA teaching hospital on the UT Health San Antonio campus.  In main hospital complex, there is a 90-bed Community Living Center, 30-bed Spinal Cord Injury Center, 8-bed Bone Marrow Transplant Unit, Level One Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center, and a Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center.

Point-of-care ultrasound education, research, and clinical use have flourished at the Audie L. Murphy VA Hospital over the past decade.  The intensive care units and hospital wards, as well as specialty clinics, are well-equipped with the latest portable ultrasound equipment.  Educational opportunities in point-of-care ultrasound for nurses, medical students, residents, fellows, and faculty continue to expand with the generous availability of ultrasound equipment and growing number of faculty with expertise in point-of-care ultrasound.

Clinical and health services research in point-of-care ultrasound continue to increase at STVHCS.  The facility has fostered research collaborations between point-of-care ultrasound experts and more than 150 research investigators conducting over 500 research activities at STVHCS.  Health services researchers at STVHCS have a dedicated research unit which is the home of the Point-of-care Ultrasound Partnered Evaluation Initiative funded by the VA’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) and the Point-of-care Ultrasound Patient Safety Center funded by the VA National Center for Patient Safety.

 

STVHCS Simulation Center

The STVHCS Simulation Center actively participates in several national educational programs. It is one of few centers accredited by VA SimLEARN and the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. The Center has dedicated space for simulation-based educational activities, including a large simulation room, two classrooms, and task-training rooms. The center has full-time staff, including a physician director, two dedicated nurse simulation educators, and a simulation technician.  Annually, over 400 training events are conducted in the STVHCS simulation center ranging from brief workshops to multi-day immersion courses. Point-of-care ultrasound educational and research activities routinely occur in the simulation center and classrooms.  The simulation center is equipped with ultrasound machines and state-of-the-art high- and low-fidelity simulation models, including several task trainers for practicing central line, peripheral intravenous line, and arterial line insertion; lumbar puncture/epidural injection; pleural drainage; airway management; tracheostomy and other specialty trainers.