Appeal to benefit emergency training

THIS year’s Grampians Health Christmas Appeal is aiming to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the Ballarat Base Hospital’s emergency department.

With a target of $55,000, Grampians Health director of emergency Dr Pauline Chapman said the money would be used by purchase a state-of-the-art mannequin, known as SimMan, that would be used to train staff.

“In emergency, everyone every year is part of our mandatory training, from cleaning staff to reception staff, all the nurses, doctors, and medical students,” she said.

“As part of that, they do a basic assessment on life support or advanced life support, depending on what their role is. A mannequin allows our team to practice being a team.

“The mannequin gets heavy use, and… we need a new one. The newer models are much more advanced and allow us to do much more, so there’s even more scope for it to be integrated into our weekly training, or the nurses’ daily education sessions.”

Intensive care clinical nurse educator Fiona Coates said SimMan mannequins realistically represent a patient’s medical conditions, allowing a team to get drawn into a scenario.

“It provides what we call real-time high-fidelity simulation, so we have the opportunity to really simulate what is happening in a patient,” she said.

“We can simulate various forms of cardiac collapse and clinical deterioration, then perform CPR or defibrillate and shock the patient. We can simulate a variety of cardiac arrhythmias.

“We can intubate and ventilate the patient, and it provides audio, with breath and heart sounds. The mannequin can speak with a limited vocab, but it can answer questions if you ask them.”

Procedures like putting in IVs or chest tubes, or an emergency tracheostomy, can also be practiced on a SimMan, to prepare staff to respond to a deteriorating patient in real time.

“Educators like myself can produce scenarios and the team has to come together, and work together, to get the patient stable,” Ms Coates said.

“This technology also allows us to pre-program a simulation, push play, and watch it unfold, pulling from a library of different scenarios, from cardiac arrest to respiratory deterioration.

“Team cohesiveness and communication is important to achieve success, so the mannequins mean we can practice how that comes together.”

The Grampians Health Christmas Appeal is on now, visit bit.ly/3ANzt1e to donate.