A Medical Manikin is a lifelike patient simulator used to represent real-world patient health scenarios. The purpose of a Medical Manikin in Healthcare Simulation is to allow learners to extend their knowledge by experiencing these scenarios in training or educational settings, so that they are better prepared for these situations as they arise in the field.
Typically, Medical Manikin products and training solutions in Medical Simulation will use high fidelity patient simulators, encompassing manikins capable of breathing, producing life-like sounds and heart tones and that will exhibit palpable pulses. In addition, Medical Manikins will usually connect to or include a monitor that is able to represent EKG, pulse oximeter, arterial waveforms, pulmonary artery waveforms, anesthetic gases and other healthcare basics.
The reality of mannequin-based simulations allows for virtual feedback using computers that regulate the Medical Manikins compressors. Using Medical Manikins thereby allows learners to develop “muscle memory” when performing procedures, and lets them make errors which they can learn from before interacting with live patients. To teach the many different skills, procedures and tasks necessary in the realm of healthcare, a variety of companies have created multiple Medical Manikins, designed with different specialties and functions in mind.
For example, there are Medical Manikins designed specifically to meet the training needs of professionals in the clinical, emergency and nursing settings. As each professional setting comes with different demands, simulation companies are able to tailor their products to meet these demands, or to establish a manikin made for more comprehensive learning.
Medical Manikins designed to simulate nursing and emergency concepts often teach patient care procedures including patient positioning and transfer techniques, intramuscular injection sites, bathing techniques, blood pressure training, urinary catheterization, NG tube placement, injection and more. Often extremely lifelike and very durable, these products can additionally demonstrate how to open a patient’s airway during CPR, check blood pressure, carotid pulse and auscultate them.
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Clinically-focused Medical Manikins will focus more on actions such as bathing, transferring and skin inspection. In general, they will relay the basic clinical skills, cognitive thinking and behavioral communication needed to examine patients in a professional healthcare setting. Just like in the case of nursing and emergency simulation training, Medical Manikins can improve a learner’s ability to internalize and execute important patient procedures and measures of testing.
The real benefit to this advancing technology is that it eliminates the sole reliance on in-classroom or textbook instruction. Instead, Medical Manikins and their simulation training measures enable students to tackle learning from a more hands-on approach. Whether a learner is focused on adult-patient care, pediatric care, infant care, geriatric care, hospital training or obstetrics, practice on a Medical Manikin will help ensure they are skilled and ready to assist everyday patients in real-time.
Examples of Medical Manikins
The company Laerdal, headquartered in Stavanger, Norway, has designed a number of Medical Manikins with the mission of helping to save lives and deter medical errors. From the beginning, Laerdal has worked with doctors, nurses, educators, researchers and leading industry organizations to ensure that the Medical Manikins offered are comprehensive and thorough learning tools.
One of the Medical Manikins that Laerdal Medical produces is Nursing Anne, designed for scenario-based training for the care and management of basic patient handling skills to advanced nursing skills. Then, Nursing Kelly is full-body adult Medical Manikin designed for scenario-based training for a wide variety of basic to advanced patient care and management skills. Additionally, Nursing Kid is a clinical skills training Medical Manikin designed for in-hospital pediatric professionals, and the Nursing Baby is a full-sized infant Medical manikin which realistically resembles a 6-month-old patient.
Alternatively, CAE Healthcare offers a number of Medical Manikins as well. For instance, the company produces CAE Luna and CAE BabySIM, which are infant simulators, and CAE PediaSIM, which is a pediatric patient simulator. Included in the other Medical Manikins that CAE Healthcare offers are an adult simulator, emergency care manikin, nursing skills manikin, adult patient simulator, childbirth simulator, female patient simulator, anesthesia simulator and a trauma patient simulator. The learning modules and patient simulation software for these Medical Manikins can be purchased separately.
Aside from full-body Medical Manikins, other companies produce simulators with the purpose of improving a learner’s specific procedural skill set. For example, the company Gaumard Scientific, headquartered in Miami, Floria, produces a CPR Simon Torso Medical Manikin. This product comes with carotid and femoral arterial pulse points, an easily accessible chest cavity with ribcage and lungs, eyes that open and close and a chest cavity with a heart for realism and practice of the Heimlich maneuver.
Along with CPR Manikins, Airway Management simulators can provide learners with exceptional insight into proper intubation technique. The Adult Airway Management Trainer produced by Simulaids showcases detailed anatomy features on the adult intubation process, with a clear picture of realistic human anatomy resulting from the sculpted alveolar sac, bronchial tree, and blood vessel structures of the cross-sectioned and exposed flexible lungs, to the interior main bronchus and oral or nasal pharyngeal spaces.
Additional features of these Airway Management Manikins like those from Simulab, 7-Sigma, or Trucorp are an airway complicated by breakout teeth, tongue edema, and laryngospasm, and an anatomical stomach that swells with esophageal intubation. The anatomical stomach will also swell given excessive pressure with the BVM during rescue breathing. Making the product even more realistic, the Airway Management Manikin has vomiting capabilities.
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Together, these products enable learners to try their hands at administering a variety of lifesaving procedures in a safe educational environment before being asked to provide them on real patients. As technology continues to advance and more companies begin developing Medical Manikins for education and research, the practice of medical can expect to become better prepared with well-equipped and educated staff members. This is no secret to colleges, universities and secondary schools who have also begun implementing Medical Manikin usage across their curriculums.
