Good idea, I say: http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/...aspx?id=570836

About 140 nursing students from West Texas A&M University and Amarillo College got together today to learn how to care for terminally ill patients and their families.

The one-day training included several hours of instruction, from pain management, to spiritual suffering, to assessing simulated patients.

One nursing student says the simulated training is important hands-on experience.

"These are patients that we can care for before we actually go out in the real world and deal with real people -- to be able to make mistakes with people that don't have feelings so you don't run a risk of doing anything wrong," said Amanda Moss, WTAMU Nursing Student.

Another trainee says technology has made it possible for students to feel more comfortable with life-like experiences.

"Confidence can be everything. We have the skills, but we also have limited ability to practice those sometimes, and so simulation is a really important development that we're getting to benefit from that others may not have had in the past -- especially as realistic as we're able to achieve now," said Aimee Pritchard, AC Nursing Student.

This is the first collaboration of its kind between WT and AC, and Helen Reyes, Head of WT's Department of Nursing, says she looks forward to the next one.