Equipment

Dedicated critical care £75,000 Simulator

We funded this piece of kit for the brand new training room at the William Harvey Critical Care Unit. The doctors provide simulated clinical care to our new sim which has a diverse range of high-fidelity functions which include patient voice, eye blinking, changes in pupil size/reaction to light, sweating, tears, seizures, tongue swelling, pulses, breath sounds and bowel sounds and is compatible with the ASL5000 lung simulator (already purchased via charitable funding) and live defibrillator use.

The simulation mannequin can be used to represent a patient who is critically unwell in a range of different clinical scenarios where doctors and nurses are required to provide treatment to stabilise the patient and provide organ support. This enables healthcare staff to practice their clinical skills in a simulated clinical environment and to improve their non-technical skills such as team working, leadership, situation awareness, task delegation, awareness of limitations, avoidance of task fixation, awareness of time, communication and need for calling for senior help.

Training like this using simulated patients avoids any potential harms coming to real patients, provides a safe place for staff to build confidence in their skills and gain insight into their strengths and weakness as a clinician/nurse so that they can improve patient safety and patient experience. This method of training can be incredibly valuable in growing clinician's/nurses awareness of human factors in recognising ways in which we can work together to avoid/reduce risk of errors occurring.