A hospital with no patients: Baptist Health opens new professional development center (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — Although it looks like a new hospital with bright corridors, gleaming equipment, and rooms staged for complex surgeries and procedures, there’s one thing missing at Baptist Health’s newest facility: patients.
Instead, the people that will fill its halls are nurses, physicians and technicians, all there to practice and hone the skills that save lives.
Baptist has unveiled its Center for Professional Excellence, a 42,066-square-foot facility designed to develop its 15,000-strong workforce and Baptist Health Clinical School trainees.
Found within San Marco East Plaza — which the nonprofit health system bought for $38 million last month — it’s the culmination of an effort to centralize Baptist’s training programs.
“In our field today, the workforce is so important of being able to attract and retain and keep competent people at the bedside,” Baptist CEO Michael Mayo told the Business Journal Friday. “Developing a simulation center beyond what we already had on a smaller version, and then adding the conference center for the best of both worlds.”
Badging into the training center earlier that morning, it was Mayo’s last day as CEO before he shifts to an advisory role next week through the end of 2026.
The space is divided in two areas.
On the right, there’s a 13,000-square-foot simulation lab, constructed as if it were a real emergency department. On the left is a more traditional learning space with 20 classrooms and 200-person capacity conference room.
Including equipment and construction, Baptist invested $11.5 million to create the center, Mayo said.
The replicated clinical environment was built to mimic Baptist’s current campuses, said Amy Sheehan, simulation and innovation manager within Baptist’s Learning and Development Department.
The center includes multiple kinds of state-of-the-art, high-fidelity manikins intended to give trainees the most immersive clinical experiences.
Those include the affectionately named “Sim Man 3G,” “Sim Man Essential,” “Sim Jr.,” “Sim Baby” and “Sim Newbie.” Varying in cost depending on the level of fidelity, manikins cost anywhere from $75,000 to $120,000, according to Sheehan.
To preserve their lifespan of typically 10 years, trainees will perform certain procedures — such as inserting IVs — on mock-up arms rather than the manikins themselves.
Spanning 20 simulation rooms — including a replica ICU, nurses’ stations, pre-op, pediatric, primary care and medical surgery rooms, among others — the simulation lab is five times larger than Baptist’s previous space.
It also has a full-size ambulance, complete with working lights, sirens and sounds that mimic a diesel engine, donated by Clay County Fire Rescue. Jacksonville-based kasper architects was the architect on the project.
“Training in settings that look and feel like the real thing helps health care teams successfully navigate the complex situations they face every day,” said Daniel Coulter, Baptist vice president of learning and development. “It builds muscle memory, which supports consistent, quality care and better patient outcomes.”
Photo courtesy of Baptist Health