New Center Honors Sister Leclare Beres, La Crosse Health Care ‘Icon’
Share this:
How do you appropriately honor someone who spent a lifetime devoted to improving the care and well-being of others? Someone considered one of the "most revered health care icons" in La Crosse, Wisconsin? If you're Mayo Clinic, you build a new center in their name so that a) that person's spirit lives on; and 2) others can learn from their legacy.
Such was the case earlier this month when staff from Mayo Clinic Health System - Franciscan Healthcare gathered to remember Sister Leclare Beres — a late member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration — and to open the doors of a new learning and resource center in her name. The Sister Leclare Beres Learning Resource Center, located inside the Professional Arts Building at Mayo Clinic Health System-Franciscan Healthcare, "would be perfect for Sister Leclare … she was so devoted to students," Sandy Brekke, director of the St. Clare Health Mission, founded by Sister Leclare, said during the center's dedication ceremony, as reported in the La Crosse Tribune.
There's no shortage of "technological aids" inside the center to help staff and nursing students improve their patient care skills, according to the Tribune. The center's main attractions are two "lifelike mannequins … named Gene or Jean (depending on the drill)" that are "programmed to mimic human traits." Those traits, reporter Mike Tighe writes, include things like the ability to "speak, have seizures, perspire from the forehead, and shoot pulsing blood … to test the mettle of staff and students." (Yeah … we're out.)
The mannequins other talents include:
- Their lips "turn blue" when oxygen levels are too low.
- Their necks "swell" so that staff and students "can practice inserting breathing tubes."
- They can become "pregnant" (complete with a "mini-mannequin baby") to help staff and students learn how to monitor fetal heartbeats, "deliver a breech infant," and respond to other pregnancy "complications."
If that's not enough, the new center also features "simulation rooms with computers and viewing stations" where instructors can make things even more interesting by "manipulating" each mannequin's symptoms "on the fly." And it's all done for the good of patients. "Our business is taking care of people," Mayo-Franciscan Chief Administrative Officer Joe Kruse said during the center's dedication ceremony, as the Tribune reports. "This whole project is to help our staff get ready to take care of people."
And to honor the past. "We also wanted to honor a treasure, Sister Leclare," Kruse said at the dedication. "She's a treasure to us."
Honor us with your comments below. You can use the handy social media tools to share this story with others.