LIMA, Ohio (WLIO) - Lima City Schools and Mercy Health teamed up to bring a new state-of-the-art learning tool to the classroom.
It looks like something you’d see in a hospital or university lab — but now, it’s right here at Lima Senior High School. The Anatomage Table is a life-sized, interactive virtual dissection tool that lets students explore real human and animal cadavers in 3D and perform simulation-style procedures.
“The students can dissect them, they can take the skin off. The table is like a big computer — if you touch a bone, it identifies what bone that is, same thing with the muscles,” said Frank Kohlhofer, director of career and technical education at Lima Senior High School. “It has functional anatomy, so the digestive system. It will teach them — or help the teacher teach them — the digestive system, the muscular system. You can take it all the way down to the nerves and the veins. It will literally show a heart beating and blood going through the veins.”
It’s the first of its kind for Lima City Schools, and it will allow students to study anatomy, health care and even veterinary sciences. And with their patient care program growing in recent years, teachers are excited for the hands-on experience this will provide their students.
“It just gives them limitless opportunities — and I’m all about books — but it gives them an opportunity to get up out of their seat and do something interactive, versus I’m just standing up there talking and you’re flipping pages in a book,” said Jodi Foster, patient care instructor at Lima Senior High School.
“Me personally, I’m really excited to practice X-rays and MRIs because I’m interested in radiology, so this program offers more than just nursing — it really shows all aspects of health care,” said a senior student in the patient care program at Lima Senior.
Mercy Health believes that building the next generation of health care workers is worth the investment.“Partnerships like the one we’ve built with Lima Senior allow us to not just reimagine but actively shape our future,” said Linsey Paul, chief nursing officer at Mercy Health. “At Mercy Health, it’s our commitment to provide great care to our community. And to do that, you need great people — so that starts right here in investing in our future workforce.”
This new space means 46 juniors can enroll in the patient care program this year — double the number from before — giving more students a chance to start building health care careers just in time for back to school.
