The Chron looks at how a state-of-the-art simulation suite is helping our medical staff be prepared for anything
Consultant anaesthetist Jeremy Stone practises medical procedures on life size dummies at Northampton General Hospital which are able to speak, blink and breathe like real patients.
THE “patient” I have been allowed in to see at Northampton General Hospital is a little on the quiet side, I have to admit.
I am not sure what exactly is wrong with Betty, but she looks pale and there is a decidedly mechanical quality to her breathing and blinking.
To make matters worse, our photographer points at her and says: “I’m not happy with those huge fake breasts dominating the photograph.”
Immediately a Northampton General Hospital anaesthetist sets about removing them, as well as her hair. And Betty becomes Dave.
Fortunately Chron photographers and NGH staff are not normally as rude as this with patients but Betty – or Dave – is no normal customer.
In fact he is a state-of-the-art medical simulation model; one of a family of manikins used by NGH doctors and medical students as a training guinea pig.
In the course of his few weeks at the new £300,000 Simulation Suite at NGH, poor old Dave has probably had more exotic illnesses and strange conditions than an ordinary human being could ever survive in a lifetime.
For staff at the hospital, the suite offers them a training and practice environment which is as close to the real thing as an artificial medical situation can possibly get.
Nurse consultant Mary Burt said: “You can train our nurses in there and you can see them actually treating it as a real situation.”
Vicky Garrod, clinical simulation co-ordinator, said: “Before, we were practising on manikins with someone standing there saying ‘their heart would be doing this.’
“Before, we had manikins that were rubber. This is a high fidelity manikin that does everything.
“If you have medical students in there you can make the patient poorly. You give the students a hand-over (of information), as you would do, and then they will be in there assessing the patient.”
Watching this little mechanised family in action is a creepy experience. Walking into the room, one has the immediate impression there has been a terrible accident; with Dave the manikin helplessly blinking away on a hospital bed and a “14-month-old” baby on a bed in another corner, surrounded by medical gadgetry.
In another room is “six-year-old” Sam, who lies forlornly on a white blanket, wearing a shell tracksuit. Nearby is a tiny model of a newborn.
The manikins can be made to bleed, blink, react to medicine and even speak. They can sweat, they can froth at the mouth, their lips will turn blue if too cold, and they can respond to the treatment given to them.
In many ways they are scarily like humans. Fiona Poyner, consultant in emergency medicine, said: “You can change them from man to woman. You can give them drugs, blood or fluid.
“There is also a set-up so you can observe video consultations. You can ask someone to tell someone the news that their child has died and – although not a good example – you can see the language they are using. Sometimes it is silly things they don’t realise they are doing, like telling someone that information standing up and looking down at them.”
It seems that the use of this kind of equipment in simulated scenarios is just starting to take off in the UK, having been made popular in America.
She continued: “This kind of practice (use of simulation suites) has really come over from the states. It started off being used for team work and for rare events but there was a lot of stuff going on in this country using old style manikins and this is a step forward.”
Adjoining the main simulation ward is a dark room behind a two-way mirror. This is the place where the behind the scenes action happens. The technical looking computerised equipment housed there is manned by Vicky, who can push buttons to programme the manikins to display specific symptoms, respond to treatment and even speak.
The ability to stage certain scenarios is useful not only for letting medical staff go through situations which have happened, step by step, to see where treatment could have been improved, but also for creating rare crisis situations which doctors may never have encountered before.
There is also a video display room in which professionals can go and play back the work they carried out with the simulation manikins, to analyse what they did right and wrong.
One rare condition the manikins are going to be used to simulate is malignant hyperthermia, which causes very unusual but life-threatening symptoms. In effect, the condition kicks in when patients have a reaction to certain drugs used in their treatment. This can leave the body incapable of regulating its own temperature.
Fiona explained: “It is a reaction to certain drugs and the patient gets hotter and hotter and we can’t cool them down, their body fries from the inside.”
But this rare condition is treatable.
She continued: “If you know what you are doing it is fine, there are specific guidelines and we will get these guidelines afterwards so everyone will know and feel comfortable that they know what to do if it ever occurs.”
Vicky said: “We are doing something on different rare occurrences for doctors so they can practise really rare events and feel they are prepared.”
She added: “A lot of people learn better by just doing.”
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Comments
There are 3 comments to this article
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SteveWonder
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 08:14 AMyou can see the language they are using????????????????
SteveWonder
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 08:10 AM"This is a high fidelity manikin that does everything"............. well puy a nurses uniform on it and send it down to Casualty............. they need the help
SteveWonder
Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 08:09 AMsorry to go on but "the states" in the context of Fionas quote is a noun............................. that's enough, I will stop now
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