Royal Alexandra Hospital Foundation

Lois Hole Hospital for Women is home to Western Canada’s very first SimCentre dedicated to women’s health. The Simulation Centre for Health Learning allows students, nurses, doctors and other medical professionals a place to gain valuable and practical experience by offering simulated medical enactments that touch on a broad range of women’s issues and events.

The purpose of the Ethiopia-Canada exchange is to help experienced Ethiopian midwives become more advanced in their knowledge and ability to teach others the skills needed to treat labouring mothers and their babies when complications arise. Inside the SimCentre nine Ethiopian medical professionals were able to experience high-risk, high-stress situations in an urgent environment without putting a patient at risk while the learning took place. An incredible experience they won’t soon forget.

The Simulation Centre for Health Learning at the Lois Hole Hospital for Women continues to be a major benchmark of achievement for the women’s hospital, which serves as the academic home for the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta.

Strong community support, particularly from philanthropic women in Edmonton and northern Alberta, resulted in the creation of the Simulation Centre for Health Learning.  The successful fundraising campaign was launched by the Royal Alexandra Hospital Foundation in 2011 and was chaired by Edmonton business woman, Maureen McCaw.

“How incredible that our hospital’s simulation centre is reaching beyond our local borders and helping women across the world,” said Dan Manning, current Chair of the Royal Alexandra Hospital Foundation Board of Directors.

“To all of those who made the Simulation Centre for Health Learning a reality we thank you. Our dream of improving women’s health stretched a little further today and without your generous support and donations this type of learning would not have been possible.”