A clinical assistant professor of nursing at the University of Massachusetts, Helene Cunningham is also the director of at the new, state-of-the-art Nursing Clinical Simulation Laboratory on Amherst’s campus. The laboratory features five hospital equipped simulation rooms and a clinical skills lab with 16 beds. An expert in teaching clinical simulation, Cunningham was also a simulation consultant at the University of Massachusetts/Baystate Medical Center practice partnership in from 2005 to 2007.

Cunningham is an expert in training nurse educators, staff nurses and students in technology. With the help of nurses, she developed and implemented more than 50 clinical simulations regarding patient safety issues in both academic and hospital settings.

In addition to coauthoring several articles about simulation, she has given both podium and poster presentations at numerous simulation conferences. Cunningham is also the primary investigator on two Massachusetts Department of Higher Education Technology Awards related to simulation use in a health care agency. Alongside another University of Massachusetts Amherst faculty member, she developed an online medication dosage-testing program that is integrated throughout the nursing school’s curriculum.