I knew that my mom’s job teaching nursing students at Tulsa Community College was awesome, but I didn’t know it had become even awesomer since her department was moved to a new building at TCC’s Southeastern campus.
No, this isn’t a hospital, and those aren’t real patients. This is the nursing department’s new skills lab, and those are hi-tech simulation mannequins, which do more than lie there looking creepy.
Above, my mom demonstrates how this particular mannequin, whom she calls James, is able to have a pulse. James can also make various bowel sounds, take shots, and have a catheter inserted by the nurses-in-training. Through patient simulations in this fake hospital ward, the students can practice basic nursing skills in a hands-on environment, responding to the changing needs of their eerily realistic patient-bots.
Apparently, James can even talk, and say things like “I’m in PAAAIIIN.” Luckily, Mom didn’t demonstrate the speaking function for me. She did tell me that once the students get over their giggles and start working with the mannequins as if they were real patients, they can get rather emotionally involved in taking care of them, and have to have “decompression” sessions after the experience.
So train to become a nurse and you might be able to play with these cool toys! Or, you know, help save lives and stuff.
Uh, I think the mouths being open like that is just icky but the whole concept is very neat. I think I’ll stick to the needles of the knitting kind……
Wow. Why are their mouths always open? Can you pour medicine down their throats? Oooh, I bet it’s for practicing intubation. That’s very popular on ER. Glad you and Mom had fun playing in the lab!
It’s a bit creepy, but no creepier than some of the lower-tech ways of teaching nurses and doctors how to do catheters and such (I’m reading Mary Roach’s “Stiff” right now).