Cleveland-based Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic have announced their health education collaboration and state-of-the-art unified campus will now include dental and nursing students.
Design plans were already submitted to the Cleveland City Planning Commission for a 485,000-square-foot campus building intended for medical education, but the extended project expands the building renderings by roughly 300,000 square feet to accommodate the addition of the dentistry and nursing programs.
The new campus will provide learning and meeting spaces to be used by the thousands of students from the two institutions. More than 1,500 students are enrolled in Case Western Reserve's dental medicine and nursing programs while the medical school's MD tracks total nearly 1,000.
The Lerner College of Medicine track at the Cleveland Clinic enrolls roughly 160 of Case Western's students, with the remainder in the university's MD and MD-PhD tracks. Plans are also in the works to add a physician assistant program that will eventually enroll 100 students.
The education building — designed by architecture firm Foster + Partners — cultivates a team-based approach to healthcare by encouraging interaction amongst the students in the classrooms as well as areas for dining and studying. By interacting with one another, students will gain a deeper understanding of and appreciation for how other healthcare workers operate and how their unique roles complement one another to improve outcomes for patients, according to Case Western Reserve University President Barbara R. Snyder.
"Studies show that team-based healthcare improves patients' experiences and results, lowers costs, and increases the job satisfaction of those involved in care," said Ms. Snyder. "Yet most of our education programs still separate the professions throughout students' academic careers. This project allows us to bring these future health care leaders together from the very start, and to do so in a thoughtful and intentional way."
The university and hospital system are still finalizing estimates for the cost of the expanded project and timelines for the construction of the campus.