WEST BURLINGTON, Iowa — Hospitals are constantly in need of nurses and other health care professionals, and those professionals must be prepared to care for patients with everything from pre-eclampsia to traumatic injuries.
That’s why Southeastern Community College designed, built and equipped its Great River Health Systems Health Professions Building — named in recognition of GRHS’ $1 million donation toward the building — to be capable of simulating the real thing. In the first year it opened, SCC’s health professions programs saw a 17 percent increase in enrollment.
“Simulation is a trend in health education,” SCC President Michael Ash told The Hawk Eye . “It’s really meeting a major area of need.”
While health professions students work with one of five mannequins from what SCC has dubbed the Sim Family (a sixth mannequin is at the Keokuk campus) in rooms designed to look like exam rooms, simulation technician Donald Aliprandi watches from the simulation center’s control room.
The mannequins are pre-programmed with scenarios through the National League of Nursing, and Aliprandi can tweak the algorithms to react to actions students take during the simulation.
“They were ignoring the fact that (Sim Mom) could have a seizure and didn’t take any seizure precautions,” Aliprandi recalled of a simulation that took place earlier this month. “So we had Sim Mom have a 15-second seizure.”
Sim Mom can do more than seize up. She also can give birth. As with real-life child birth, the process can get messy.
