In Brief
- Students at Crozer-Chester Medical Center's Emergency Medical Services Training Institute (EMSTI) recently obtained SimMan, a patient simulator that can breathe, bleed, and speak in different languages.
- SimMan gives students an opportunity to practice their skills in a realistic atmosphere. Depending on the students' accuracy, the instructor can make SimMan's condition better or worse, which helps the students to work under pressure and respond to unexpected patient reactions.
- SimMan is also used by the respiratory staffs at Crozer and Springfield.
- Crozer's EMSTI trains over 500 paramedics, nurses, doctors and other health care professionals every year.
Students at Crozer-Chester Medical Center's Emergency Medical Services Training Institute (EMSTI) recently welcomed one of their most unique and helpful classmates. SimMan, a 5-foot-5, 75-pound patient simulator that can breathe, bleed, and speak in several languages, has been a fully operational addition to the EMSTI for over six months.
SimMan gives students an opportunity to practice their skills in a realistic atmosphere. With features such as an anatomically correct bronchial tree, a pulse, blood pressure, bowel sounds, skin and veins, SimMan is the closest thing to an actual patient students can practice with during their training.
"The main advantage with SimMan is patient safety," says Michael Lynch, administrative director of the EMSTI. "Students can practice and perfect skills such as advanced airway management, intubation, injections, and catheterization, before working with live patients."
The staff of Crozer EMSTI has created a fully equipped, imitation operating room to accommodate SimMan. A small control room, where the EMSTI instructor controls the actions and reactions of the simulator through computer software, is set off to the side of the operating room. A one-way mirror separates the two rooms, allowing control of the simulation without the students' knowledge. The instructor has the ability to make SimMan display almost any symptom that an actual patient would experience, from high blood pressure to cardiac arrest.
Crozer EMSTI instructors monitor the students' actions in the operating room to ensure that they are using the proper procedures to treat SimMan. Depending on the students' accuracy, the instructor can make SimMan's condition better or worse, which helps the students to work under pressure and respond to unexpected patient reactions. An added bonus is that all SimMan scenarios are videotaped, allowing students to analyze their performances and learn from their mistakes.
SimMan also provides students with his own multilingual feedback. Phrases can be prerecorded in any language and played during the simulation, or spoken live into a microphone connected to the computer. In addition to speaking, SimMan coughs, moans and "vomits" on command, all of which can be prerecorded or spoken live.
The possibilities are endless with SimMan, both with what he is able to do and with who can benefit from practicing with him. According to Lynch, SimMan is currently used to train paramedics, nurses, respiratory staff and medical residents.
"Every day we find another department or type of student who can gain an advantage from working with SimMan," Lynch says. "SimMan receives rave reviews from all students and staff who work with him."
According to Lynch, the respiratory staffs at both Crozer and Springfield Hospital consider SimMan a significant learning tool, as he allows them to practice advanced airway management. SimMan can experience a collapsed lung, a swollen tongue, stomach distension and various other difficult airway symptoms, all of which a respiratory team may encounter with an actual patient.
Crozer's EMSTI trains over 500 paramedics, nurses, doctors and other health care professionals every year. Recently, the EMSTI received a 2004 'Top 10 Training Center in the Region' award from the American Heart Association.