Nobel Prize-winner opens $2.5 million lab in his name

Nobel Prize-winner and University of Adelaide medicine alumnus Emeritus Professor J. Robin Warren AC, talking with the Vice-Chancellor and President Professor James McWha and medical students in the new clinical skills lab.
Photo by Kendall Marriott.
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Thursday, 24 May 2012

Medicine and nursing students from the University of Adelaide will gain vital clinical skills thanks to a new, state-of-the-art teaching facility named after one of the University's most illustrious medical graduates, Emeritus Professor J. Robin Warren AC.

Professor Warren, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2005, has today opened the new Robin Warren Clinical Skills Laboratory at the University's Medical School with Health Minister the Hon. John Hill.

The Robin Warren Lab is a $2.5 million facility where students can practise and learn the fundamentals of medical consulting and nursing. The lab features single-bed "mini wards" that are fully equipped as if they were real hospital wards, including actual hospital beds, bathrooms and showers. Change rooms, tutorial rooms, and a debriefing area are also included.

First and second-year medical students will use the lab to learn how to talk to patients, take their histories, and make diagnoses. This interaction will be with "surrogate patients" - trained actors posing as patients.

Nursing students can use the lab to familiarise themselves with a typical hospital environment and practise nursing care, such as learning how to assist patients in shower and bathroom areas.

The new lab will also be used for clinical exams for students in all years of study.

"The Robin Warren Lab represents a real-world environment within a classroom - perfect for students in the early years of their study," says the University's Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor James McWha.

"This large, dedicated and flexible teaching space will lead to outstanding teaching and learning outcomes for our growing number of students in nursing and medicine. The facility will be critical in developing the all-important clinical skills needed by students, and this will have a direct benefit on the future health outcomes of South Australians.

"The University of Adelaide is extremely proud of Dr Robin Warren's achievements. We hope that by naming this new facility in his honour, it will serve as an inspiration to new generations of students."

Dr J. (John) Robin Warren graduated in medicine from the University of Adelaide in 1961. He received the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine with colleague Professor Barry Marshall. Their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease revolutionised the treatment of this major medical problem. Dr Warren is Emeritus Professor at the University of Western Australia and the Royal Perth Hospital.

In 2006, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Adelaide in recognition of his distinguished achievement as a scholar and his contribution to society in physiology and medicine.

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