The Anne Simulator is a healthcare simulation training product offered by Laerdal Medical. Designed to represent the body of an adult female, the highly realistic female patient simulator helps learners to understand the different aspects of modern nursing education and combine them with clinical care practices.
The core nursing simulation skills which the Anne Simulator helps to train learners on includes critical thinking, advanced interventions and basic assessment techniques. Through learning systems like these manikins, educators can help develop these skills for current and future healthcare professionals to further understand the methodology and strategy behind clinical care procedures.
Benefits and Features of the Anne Simulator
Some of the more basic procedures that the Anne Simulator can help learners practice includes how to complete a urinary catheterization, the placement and care of gastric lavage, gavage and NG tubes. The female simulator is also a great tool for showing trainees where anatomical landmarks are.
Educators and trainers can further exemplify and oversee the palpation of anatomy through the use of the Anne Simulator. Understanding the areas of the clavicle, scapula and anterior superior iliac crest are critical for proper insertion locations. Identification of palpation techniques are equally necessary when delivering a medication deep into the muscles through an intramuscular (IM) injection.
Other special features of the Anne Simulator can be used to help trainees recognize specific medical scenarios. For example, the life-like simulator can reflect patient consciousness for evaluation. Just like a conscious real-life patient would display spontaneous breathing and blinking eyes, the simulated unconscious Anne Simulator does not display these features.
Realistic training provided by the Anne Simulator is not limited to procedure demonstration and the identification of an unconscious state. Alternatively, the manikin can be used to teach learners how to auscultate anterior and posterior lung sounds. Learning how to auscultate heart and bowel sounds are important as well.
“I was delighted to see this product coming on the market because what I see there is it’s got the heart sounds, lung sounds that we really want,” Suzie Kardong-Edgren, PhD, RN, ANEF, CHSE, FSSH, FAAN, a professor and director of the RISE Center at the School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Robert Morris University, said. “I think the Anne Simulator prevents some training scars. We used to teach people to listen only on the front, but the Anne Simulator has the capability of listening on the back so that we will be teaching people appropriately so that they don’t forget to check those things.”
A well-rounded nursing education relies on the infusion of fluids, as well as medication with bilateral (pre-ported) IV arms and central line catheter. These procedures are capable of being simulated on the Anne Simulator, which is important practice before attempting them on a live patient.
Without involving injection, this medical simulation model enables training on CPR, as Anne Simulator’s CPR capabilities including compressions and ventilation. Performing bilateral assessments on realistic vital signs with bilateral blood pressures and pulses is yet another benefit of simulating nursing skills prior to testing them first-hand.
According to Laerdal Medical, the Anne Simulator comes with a tetherless operation that allows learners to interact realistically with wireless operation. The company also states that realistic patient handling and movement, in combination with bilateral articulating elbows, positional head, and bendable waist allow the simulator to sit up unassisted or be placed in tripod position.
There are also numerous “next level with add-on accessory modules that facilitate clinical training focused on learning objectives geared toward mastectomy care, wound assessment and general patient care,” Laerdal says. All features combined, the healthcare simulation company’s Anne Simulator helps learners, trainees and trainers to expand the way healthcare and nursing training is overseen and completed.
How Anne Simulator works
When using the Anne Simulator product, educators and trainers can employ pre-programmed scenarios from Laerdal and expert partners. This feature allows them to choose between several scenarios to train in a wide range of competencies. If a certain scenario is necessary but not already included, learners and educators can opt to buy scenarios to run additional training simulations.
Simulation training with the use of scenarios helps to enable instructors to provide a “consistent, safe and realistic way for learners to practice core skills,” Laerdal says. Most scenarios available are designed to offer practice with basic assessments and critical thinking to advanced interventions.
WIth Anne SImulator, learners are able to take complete control of their own training by planning, running and assessing simulations. Laerdal further offers “LLEAP,” a unified platform for simulation training. This platform provides educators and learners with the opportunity to gain complete control of your simulation training. They can also find scenarios, execute simulation training and conduct valuable debriefs.
Through the use of the Anne Simulator, learners can optimize their investments by providing ways for them to stay operational and on top of the latest simulation knowledge. This made possible is through the support of the extensive Laerdal technical and educational service portfolio, the company states on the Anne Simulator webpage.
Laerdal also stresses that an educational portfolio will help learners to implement best practices in their simulation training. The portfolios also help educators to optimize learning potential in their students. This is critical to healthcare outcomes because one of the biggest challenges presented in the academic setting is the ability to practice.
Some of the simulated procedures and exercises that Anne Simulator can greatly assist with include how to check and replace the air filter, how to quick fill reservoirs, how to fill and pressurize a urine reservoir, how to set up the stoma for irrigation and how to remove and replace the head and torso skin. Moulage can be added to Nursing Anne to improve the realism of simulation scenarios by demonstrating to learners the human patient simulator signs and symptoms.
The Anne Simulator also teaches learners how to remove the Anne Simulator’s legs, how to reconnect the legs, provides an overview of the control panel and label, how to disconnect and connect the arms, how to prepare the central line reservoir, how to unlock the waist for tripod breathing, how to download complimentary scenarios for LLEAP and how to download complementary scenarios for SimPad.
