Chad Epps, MD has been selected as executive director of the Interprofessional Simulation and Patient Safety Center currently under construction at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC).

Epps will combine his expertise as a physician and a teacher to improve education for future health care professionals and the quality of care their patients will receive. Epps trained in anesthesiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and completed a fellowship in Human Patient Simulation at Mount Sinai Human Emulation Education and Evaluation Lab for Patient Safety and Professionalism. Most recently, Dr. Epps has served as the associate director for the Office of Interprofessional Simulation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Most recently, Dr. Epps has served as the associate director for the Office of Interprofessional Simulation at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

He will be the first to lead academic programs in the new $36.7 million building, which is expected to be completed in January, 2017.

The building will allow students from all six colleges at UTHSC to train together in simulation settings to develop their skills in delivering team-based healthcare. Students will have the use of high-tech manikins and standardized patients (actors who portray patients with a variety of conditions).

Each floor of the three-story building will be dedicated to a different aspect of simulation training, he said. The first floor includes bed-skill stations that will allow students to focus on preclinical skills and assessments. There will also be a simulated home environment, where students can practice delivering in-home patient care.

The second floor will house a simulated acute-care setting resembling a hospital environment with patient rooms and a variety of manikins that can simulate everything from surgery to labor and delivery.

The third floor will house the standardized patient program. It will include 24 patient exam rooms, as well as a community pharmacy setting.