Behling Human Simulation Center

Advancing interdisciplinary, cooperative skills, the Behling Simulation Center prepares our students to meet the challenges of the contemporary health care environment. In eight flexible clinical settings, students practice procedures ranging from inserting catheters and delivering babies to resuscitating injured patients.

The center offers more than 50 simulation scenarios in which students address cases including traumatic injury, pediatric septic shock, kidney disease and teen pregnancy. After each scenario, students review video of their performance with faculty and staff to discuss what went well and areas for improvement.

Our 12,000-square-foot center is the first of its kind in the nation to train students from the full range of health disciplines together.

Mark J. Lema, MD, PhD, UB professor, calls simulations “the future of resident and fellow clinical training,” providing opportunities to practice procedures safely before treating live patients.

In addition to working with mannequins, students also train crucial interpersonal skills. Certain scenarios put students into situations where they have to tell a relative that a loved one is critically ill or dying. As one faculty member describes the merits of this particular simulation, “Until students are in that situation, they don't know how they are going to deal with it.”

Clinicians, educators and researchers from all five health sciences schools develop the center’s curricula collaboratively, strengthening interdisciplinary connections throughout the university's Academic Health Center. Area health care institutions and students from area colleges also train at the center, improving patient care and interprofessional competence throughout Western New York.

The center is named for UB alumnus Ralph Behling, MD ’43. The first physician in Buffalo to use injected penicillin to fight infection, Behling worked for the U.S. Public Health Service and helped standardize cancer treatment nationwide.