The Arthur Labatt Family School of Nursing occupies a full wing of the FIMS & Nursing Building (FNB) on Western University’s beautiful main campus. This building opened in 2017 and serves as the primary home for the School’s faculty, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate simulation education.

The School of Nursing has dramatically expanded in student enrolment, which necessitated several facilities expansions and updates across the FIMS & Nursing Building and the Labatt Health Sciences Building. There are now over 1,600 undergraduate students and nearly 300 graduate students in the School of Nursing.

Physical space in the School of Nursing is inclusive and welcoming, including classrooms, clinical training space, seminar rooms, graduate student research space and collaborative learning areas.

Simulation and laboratory training spaces across the two buildings include 40+ hospital beds with technology that accurately replicates a hospital setting. In these spaces, students learn everything from vaccinations to advanced acute care with live model “patients” and high fidelity manikins which replicate nearly all health ailments or situations.

“We are preparing students not only for practical skills they will need, but equipping them for the comprehensive layers of problem-solving, critical thinking and evidence-based decision-making that are required components of nurses’ daily roles,” said Professor Victoria Smye, director of Western’s nursing program. “We believe that this — coupled with a focus on research, leadership, information management, communication and innovation — helps make us unique among nursing programs in the country.”