No dummies, they save lives
High-tech mannequins, at $35,000 per head, give realistic training
LAWRENCE -- The man on the bed is not in great shape.
According to his story, he was working on a car when it fell on him. The accident cut up his face, caused one of his lungs to collapse and fractured several bones. There also may be more injuries that surface later.
If you're a nursing student at Northern Essex Community College, you will see this man in one of your classes so you must be ready to administer the correct care. His life is in your hands. One wrong move, a slip in medication, or an oversight of a vital sign, and the man before you is a goner.
Don't worry, though. If he dies, he can be brought back to life so you can try again.
This year the school is using a new set of high-tech mannequins that can simulate trauma, illness, pain, even death. The mannequins, made by the medical company Laerdal , come with a full set of gadgets, interchangeable body parts, and software to give students a realistic experience of working with the sick and injured without having to work on the real-live sick and injured. With the help of a computer, the mannequins' vital signs can be changed, breathing patterns can be altered, or the tongue can swell.
Sheila Kane , assistant professor of nursing, said the mannequins help teach such basic nursing skills as listening for lung and other sounds. But Kane said the mannequins -- spelled manikin in the medical trade -- also allow teachers to give students a case history just as in a real hospital. "We say this is your patient. Here's the report," said Kane.
From there, students must monitor the patient and figure out what to do next, while Kane goes behind a wall to observe how the students respond. With a click of a mouse, Kane and other nursing instructors can change the mannequin's status and students must adjust. Kane can also talk through a microphone that is transmitted through the mannequin to complain about a pain or an uncomfortable change. The point, said Kane, is to force students to get used to interacting with patients and to deal with potential problems.
"If the student doesn't ask the right question, the student won't find that out," said Kane.
Attached to the mannequins are real-life monitoring systems to follow vital signs so that students can keep up. The constant beeping and deep breathing give the feel of an actual trauma center.
Jackie Long-Goding , dean of health professions at the college, said mannequins are meant to allow nursing students to take what they've learned in the classroom and transform it into practical use. Because so much can be at stake in an intensive care unit, the mannequins help re-create the high stress environment in which the nursing students soon will find themselves.
Paramedic and dentistry classes also use the mannequins, Long-Goding said.
The mannequins cost about $35,000 each, and currently five are sitting quietly on hospital beds awaiting nursing students. Each has a different focus, even its own name.
There's SimMan , a mannequin that can change its heart and lung sounds. There's SimBaby , an eerily realistic infant that can wheeze and have its lips turn purple (if it's not getting enough oxygen). There's MegaCode Kid , a smaller version on SimMan but with a faster heartbeat and the vital signs of a child. There's VitalSim , a creation designed to focus students on even the smallest sign of pain. Then there's Mr. Ultimate Hurt , the car accident victim that can change into a guy who just had a lawn mower accident or a man who just escaped a fire. You can change a foot into one with a severed toe or give an arm third-degree burn marks.
When students first see the mannequins, especially SimBaby, there is typically a slight pause and an emotional reaction, said Saleh Daher , the school's residential program director. That's because at first glance they look so real, he said.
But once they get over that initial shock, students get to work, said Daher.
Before the arrival of such high-tech mannequins, nursing students were forced to do some of their training in live settings, said Kane. That posed a disadvantage because in those setting real lives were at stake and sometimes the students couldn't administer medicine, she said.
With these mannequins, there is enough room for error so they can practice administering medicine, even if it's the wrong approach.
"Obviously, the mannequins can't swallow" medicine, said Kane. She said one nursing student mistakenly put a nitroglycerin pill under a mannequin's tongue.
According to Laerdal's website, more than 2,000 such mannequins are in use nationwide. Nursing programs are the largest users, followed by the military, emergency medical services, anesthesiologists, hospitals, and medical schools. The mannequins are assembled in Gatesfield, Texas, and the software used to run them is developed in Stavanger, Norway.
Long-Goding acknowledges that the $35,000 cost per mannequin is steep but maintains that returns will come back tenfold as the school helps combat a statewide nursing shortage by educating new nurses with advanced training.
The purchase of the mannequins is another move by Northern Essex to invest in nursing programs at the Lawrence campus. In June, the Lawrence City Council voted to donate the downtown In-Town Mall building to the school so the school could tear it down and put up a new building for its technology and nursing programs. The center, according to college president David Hartleb , would train students in high-demand areas who could enter the job market at salaries starting at $40,000 a year.
The state also has promised to provide around $16 million to help demolish the site, and the federal government would kick in $260,000 to remove asbestos from the site.
But the school isn't finished investing in high-tech mannequins. Just this month, the school received its latest model -- a woman who can give birth. Kane said this mannequin will help those nursing students destined for the delivery room.
"I haven't seen her, though," said Kane. "We haven't put her together."
Russell Contreras can be reached at rcontreras@globe.com. 