Our facilities

Our facilities

The School of Health and Social Care has a range of facilities including:

• Mock wards in both Colchester and Southend which are populated by sim-men. This allows nursing and occupational therapy students to practice their clinical skills in a controlled environment before they go out on placement.
• Oral health science labs. Based at our Southend campus, students on our undergraduate oral health science courses can utilise "phantom heads" to develop the skills needed to practise as a Hygienist or Dental Therapist. For our postgraduate students, we also have our Academic Dental Clinic based at Bromley Road Dental Surgery in Colchester.  This clinic is the only place in England to teach advanced periodontology in a non-teaching hospital setting. This approach means our students have access to patients in a general dental practice setting, and will learn in an environment which is parallel to the settings where they are employed.
• Community living spaces. Our fully furnished flat in Colchester is equipped with an adapted kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, and our multi-skills lab in Southend offers a bedroom and living area. These community living spaces can be set up to recreate a multitude of scenarios that our students may encounter in the community and can be used by any of our Health and Social Care students.
• Communication labs. Our speech and language therapy students can independently use this space to understand a range of speech and language issues, from the damage caused by throat cancer, to speech delay in infants. Our facilities include models of the throat, mouth, and vocal cords, and a range of specialised simulation software to enable greater understanding of the anatomy and physiology.
• Consultation rooms. At our Colchester campus we have six rooms available for students to conduct mock one-to-one consultations. These rooms are appointed with recording equipment so students can self-evaluate.
• Flexible teaching spaces, which can be set up to aid practical learning for all of our courses. For example, our Psychological Well-being Practitioner students often use these spaces to develop their telephone-based support and protocols.