Thanks to a more than $162,000 grant by the Schmieding Foundation, Coastal Alabama Community College nursing students, as well as emergency responders and other healthcare personnel, will enjoy enhanced resources in 2025 and beyond.
The Arkansas-based nonprofit is dedicated to supporting healthcare and education throughout the country and has formerly sponsored scholarships for the college’s Certified Nursing Assistant program. Now supporting the credit-based Registered Nursing degree programs within the Nursing and Allied Health Division, the grant has been used to purchase two state-of-the art anatomage tables, which offer digitized human cadavers and superior medical learning tools, to help transform healthcare education and training. The devices will be used on the Bay Minette and Fairhope campuses.
“The anatomage tables are incredible, allowing students to access cross sections of the human body and really learn about different disease processes,” said Dr. Tiffany Scarborough, Dean of Nursing and Allied Health for Coastal Alabama Community College. “While they don't replace hands-on clinical experience, these tools allow us to move beyond lecturing in the classroom and instead demonstrate real-world applications in action.”
(With the grant), the Schmieding Foundation is focused on Baldwin County, as there is so much growth in Registered Nursing programs in our county.”
Gilda Underwood, the former president of the Schmieding Foundation, recently toured the Fairhope campus and was quite impressed by that campus’s anatomage table.
“Coastal Alabama is the education center for Baldwin County, and considering we’re short of doctors, nurses and all the techs along the way, the more you can educate, the more it serves the public,” Underwood said. “Education is key, because we all want good healthcare.”
In the past, students were only able to learn about certain disease processes — such as congestive heart failure — through a series of videos and lectures, and now the anatomage tables can virtually animate exactly what’s happening inside the body during such critical moments. Each anatomage table costs approximately $62,000 and will benefit not only the College’s nursing students, but it can be used by biology students, as well as emergency response personnel, who often train through the college’s Nursing and Allied Health programs.
“There's a huge benefit to hands-on learning experiences, and showing them real-world scenarios, even if they are in a controlled, simulated environment is a great teaching tool,” Scarborough said. “This takes everything to the next level.”
Proceeds from the grant are also funding additional nursing lab equipment, such as Stop the Bleed supplies, which help in critical situations where someone is severely injured and needing immediate care. Those trained through the Stop the Bleed program often provide lifesaving care in the most serious situations, such as the Coastal Alabama Community College graduate who last year helped save the life of a 15-year-old girl who was mauled by a shark and hemorrhaging in the Gulf waters. “Stop the Bleed has been huge and has led to a lot of good results in the community as an outcome,” Scarborough said.”