A La Roche University nursing graduate who founded a company that supplies products for nursing and medical students to practice their skills before working on real patients made sure students at his alma mater had the tools they needed for success.

In early 2020, Anthony J. Battaglia contributed the largest outright gift from a La Roche graduate in the institution’s history to build a new clinical simulation center.

This week, university officials honored the benefactor with the dedication of the Anthony J. Battaglia Clinical Simulation Center.

Battaglia earned a bachelor of science degree in nursing at La Roche in 1995 and went on to get his master’s degree in training and development from Carlow University. He also is a fellow in entrepreneurial business with the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh.

Battaglia is the founder, president and chief executive officer of Pocket Nurse, an international supplier of products used to train nurses and doctors. The company is based in Monaca, Beaver County.

University officials say the simulators are a vital addition to the school’s nursing programs, which include an Entry Level Master of Science in Nursing that was launched in 2019.

“The ELMSN program and the clinical simulation center, made possible by Anthony’s generosity, is doing something positive to meet the need of educating future nurses and giving them the kind of experience that will impact all those for whom they care,” said La Roche president Sister Candace Introcaso during an Aug. 19 dedication ceremony. “It is in these spaces that our students, our faculty and others will experience an education that has the potential to change the world in which we live.”

The ELMSN is an accelerated program in which someone with a bachelor’s degree of any kind can earn a master’s degree in nursing by taking an additional 77 credits, which can be earned in as little as 20 months.

The center is equipped with a variety of medical simulators to teach various treatments. So-called low- to mid-fidelity simulators are used to teach students how to check for vital signs, care for wounds and perform other procedures.

High fidelity simulators are programmed so that students “can use higher-order thinking to respond to more complex conditions related to neurological, respiratory and cardiac problems,” according to university officials.

“I’m a firm believer in the importance of using simulation tools to prepare future generations of health care professionals for working in the field,” Battaglia said when he made the donation in 2020. “Sim learning is important in general because even though it’s fiction, the decisions you make are real. It provides a safe place for students to practice, to ask questions and to make mistakes. The knowledge they gain in the sim lab can then be used in real life.”

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