University of Alberta New Clinic

[schalker_24]

For anyone interested:

 

We had our first lab in the new Edmonton Clinic Health Academy ECHA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmonton_Clinic) on Friday and I thought that I'd let you guys know a little more about the building.

 

So ECHA along with the other new clinic building (which will be finished in the summer of next year) cost $909 million to build. It's entirely funded by the gov't (thank you dirty oil) and our tuition is actually going down because we rent more stuff now instead of buying. The building has mixed reviews by some students but I really like it. It has all of the health disciplines (nursing, nutrition, physio ect...) and has a extremely high girl to guy ratio!

 

We have a lot of our lectures in the new building which is really spiffy except for some stupid reason they only made the outlets on the edge of the rooms so everyone sits right at the edge of the rooms instead of in the middle... it's a little weird. Also they didn't put garbage cans in for the first month or so and there are no clocks. I guess they figure we're on our phones all the time anyways (so true)

 

So the actual lab is ssoooo SWEET! We actually face the side of the room and to see the front we either turn our chairs to our right or left. There are tons of 60 inch HD TV's that make it really easy to see what's going on wherever you are. The instructor has a little area at the front that has HD cameras all designed into that area so that he can give a demo with at least one of the cameras zoomed in on his removable partial denture or whatever it is he's working on. The picture is freaking amazing and soooo clear. I can honestly see his partial denture better than my own, even when I put it three inches away from my face. Then when the professor wants to lecture a little bit and do some demos on the board he will walk over to the white board while another professor uses the remote (which looks like an ipad to me) and changes the camera so that a different camera from the roof will now be in control and can follow him around and zoom right in on any diagram that he may be drawing.

 

We also have brand new sim equipment (It's all electric for the hand pieces) with built in curing lights. This clinic is just ballin out of control. It's a little annoying that we only have half lockers in the lab and the change rooms are a little too small and again only have half lockers but all in all the actual sim lab is crazy. Apparently the people from Macleans magazine were just by and told the assistants that our labs are apparently the nicest (or best or tops in some way) not only in Canada but in North America. I find this a little hard to believe with all the crazy American schools out there charging $70,000 for tuition but that's what I was told.

 

So there's my review. Oh, and take Rock The DAT if your writing your November DAT! You won't regret it! I'm teaching in Halifax.

[zap_man99]

cant wait till intersession to get into them labs.

 

and yes the lectures are annoying because of the outlets, whoever built the building was dumb, but my solution is to eventually bring a power bar