CMC Breckenridge closes in on opening new addition

Nursing simulation and outdoor skills lab will be ready for fall semester

By Carrie Click

June 20, 2023 – Seventeen months after receiving unanimous approval from the Breckenridge Town Council, Colorado Mountain College Breckenridge hosted a sneak peek event on June 14 to give community members a look inside the campus’s almost completed nursing simulation and outdoor skills lab. The addition will be ready for nursing and emergency medical services classes by fall semester in August.

The 7,761-square-foot addition replicates medical care processes, from rescuing patients to arriving at a medical facility to being treated at a hospital. EMT and wilderness EMT students will get a feel for transporting injured patients on a two-story rappelling wall inside the lab and transferring them to a simulated medical facility.

Nursing students will then receive patients and assess high-technology mannequins, each with unique medical issues. The mannequins come equipped with heartbeats, blood and other bodily functions that students need to identify and treat while nursing faculty oversees and instructs students in observation rooms through one-way glass.

The lab answers a need in the area to provide training to more nurses and emergency medical professionals. CMC Dean Dave Askeland said the college’s nursing program is competitive and receives more applications than it can take. With the added space, the Breckenridge campus will be able to add six more nursing students per class to the current 12 students the campus has been able to accept.

The lab addition came in at an overall cost of $8.5 million, and the CMC Foundation is seeking to raise a remaining $700,000 as construction nears completion.