La Crosse’s Gundersen education center — the ICE House — adds new simulated hospital rooms

There’s more space now for medical training at Gundersen Health Systems in La Crosse.

Gundersen Integrated Center for Education (ICE House) has added three new simulated hospital rooms to be used for training doctors and other staffers.

“Last year, I had over 9000 learners come through our four-room simulation lab,” ICE House manager Carley Buisman said. “I had to turn away a lot of people that wanted to use the space, or we had to do the education in the hospital itself.”

Buisman added that being able to include the three new rooms “is going to just improve and increase how much education we can do here at Gundersen.”

The additions also include two control rooms, where instructors watch through one-way windows as the trainees practice medical care in the simulation rooms.

The labs have the modern equipment you’d find in an actual room at Gundersen, but the patients being examined generally are not human.

They’re automated mannequins that can breathe and blink their eyes, although for the open house, one room did feature a volunteer playing the role of a patient.