That mannequin is breathing!

I have a light homework load for the rest of the week due to on-site clinical orientations tomorrow and Friday at the hospital and long-term care facilities. I'm not quite sure what to do with myself! (I feel the need to explain so you won't wonder how I have so much time for blogging.)

Today we got our first official tour of the campus "Simulation lab" and it was pretty amazing. The lab consists of a room split into four sections with a closed off control booth in the center, similar to a recording studio. In each section there is a simulated hospital room, complete with bed, monitor, computer on wheels, and a patient! The "patient" is a very life-like mannequin that, if you watch closely, actually breathes! It also has pulses at various locations and areas on its chest where you can listen to heart and lung sounds with your stethoscope. You can also take its blood pressure on the left arm, which I did this morning... very strange experience! The mannequins and corresponding computer equipment are programmed in the control room by computer, and the program lets you adjust the mannequin's pulse rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, and the quality of heart and lung sounds. There are also some prerecorded sounds the mannequin can vocalize, such as moaning, vomiting, and complaining about how much pain he is in. The people outside the booth cannot see in, so we had a great time surprising our classmates by making the mannequin cough and vomit at inopportune times during examinations!

In the future, we'll be using the Sim Lab (as they refer to it) to practice specific nursing scenarios and they will video us from the control room so we can watch and evaluate ourselves later. The people in the control room can wear headsets with voice-modification technology to make the mannequins talk to us... how cool is that?? I had no idea that ANY of this stuff was even possible! Now I don't feel bad about some of those generic fees they charge along with tuition!