Simulators and Manikins that are Changing the Healthcare Scenario | SEM Trainers

It is hard to imagine teaching basic clinical skills without using simulators today. The technology has revolutionized our approach to healthcare and has significantly improved the quality of healthcare available. If you are someone who trains aspiring learners in the medical/nursing fields, you can’t go ahead without thinking about medical manikins and simulators.

When deciding which manikins to purchase, there are many factors you need to consider, like functionality, fidelity, and cost, among others. At SEM Trainers, we bring you the biggest variety of simulators and manikins, all of which are ISO 9001-Certified and acquired from 3B Scientific, meeting the highest quality standards. We provide everything from low-fidelity to high-fidelity trainers, for all your needs.

Here are some of SEM Trainers’ leading medical simulators:

Airway Larry

This airway management trainer torso has realistic anatomy and landmarks, and is perfect for practicing intubation, ventilation, suction, and CPR techniques for both freshers and advanced students.

ADAM-X-HPS-PRO

ADAM is the most realistic, high-fidelity adult male human patient simulator. He’s good for everything from patient care and emergency medical intervention to resuscitation training for dynamic team training. If you’re looking for an Advanced Trauma Life Support trainer, you can’t miss this one.

Adult CPR Manikin

A realistic, full-size manikin with anatomical landmarks for training BLS rescue techniques and CPR.

Advanced Child Airway Management Trainer

With tongue swelling and laryngospasm, this 5-year old child trainer is perfect for practicing intubation, ventilation, suction, and jaw thrust skills on pediatric patients- for both introductory and advanced training.

Patient Care Manikin PRO

A complete patient care and advanced nursing skills solution. This adult, life-size patient manikin has interchangeable genitals and natural movement of the arms, legs, and joints. It’s great for teaching everything from transfer skills and bed care to bathing and bandaging a patient- and everything in between.

Advanced Casualty Simulation Kit

This is an emergency simulation kit with complex wounds testing higher levels of skill in bandaging and patient care while keeping initial expenditures low. It includes a gunshot wound of the palm, a sucking wound of the chest, compound fractures of the humerus and the tibia, and an open amputation in addition to 24 stick-on lacerations and open fracture wounds.

Advanced Lucy

Bringing a human into this world is powerful, so here’s an emotionally engaging birthing simulator, Advanced Lucy, to bring a new level of realism to prenatal to postnatal delivery scenarios. Lucy is anatomically accurate and helps students experience normal and abnormal deliveries, preparing them for the real ones.

Advanced KERi Nursing Manikin

KERi doesn’t seem to have a specific age, but is capable of a lifelike range of motion, realistic patient positioning, and non-pinching joints so it even moves like a real person. And it can convert to male. KERi is great for everything from bandaging and bed baths to catheterization and pap smears.

Articulating Fetus

A realistic, 42cm fetus with articulating head, neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees for more realistic practice of difficult delivery exercises such as Leopold’s or Ritgen’s maneuvers.

Rescue Randy

Randy is a rugged, hyper-realistic manikin designed for enhanced realistic training on procedures that treat the 3 most preventable causes of death (massive bleeding, tension pneumothorax, and airway obstruction). It is compliant with TCCC/TECC scenarios.

Complete Intramuscular Injection Training Kit

This kit has the entire 3B Scientific suite of intramuscular injection simulators and helps practice IM injections anywhere on the body. It also helps locate the correct site for injection using realistic and anatomically accurate upper arm, buttock, and upper leg simulators, and helps feel the correct needle depth too.

This was just a sneak peek into the long list of leading manikins and simulators from SEM Trainers. Visit www.semtrainers.com to see over 1200 products listed on our site and take your pick.

After all, these simulators will end up being used for years, training hundreds, even thousands of students before they’ll need to be replaced. With manikins and simulators, you deserve nothing but the best.

3 Questions to Ask Before Buying Your Next Patient Simulator

What is a Human Patient Simulator?

Patient simulators are life-size manikins with lifelike features and responsive physiology like respiration, heart beat, and pulse. In simpler terms, these are mechanical and computer-controlled simulators that look realistic and respond realistically, showing symptoms and disease processes as would be in real life. This kind of high-fidelity realism provides a hands-on learning experience in a controlled environment, and is great for building clinical skills, communication skills, and critical thinking in learners.

One thing to consider when buying a simulator or manikin is their high acquisition and maintenance costs. With that in mind, before making a purchase, it’s important to ask the right questions.

Question: What skills do we need to teach with this patient simulator?

Patient simulators come in a variety of models, from surgical simulators and military simulators to birthing simulators, preterm infant simulators, and geriatric simulators. Some manikins come with severed limbs or burn injuries. These can be great for teaching learners how to deal with military, trauma, or emergency cases while also training on triage for such cases. With multiple manikins, you can also create mass casualty simulations. If your purpose is to train for birthing related skills, you can go for various manikins to simulate labor, delivery, newborn emergencies, and postpartum critical events. These can teach skills like delivering a baby head down, caring for preterm babies, caring for sick babies, caring for the mother with postpartum complications. Whatever skills you need to teach, look for simulators related to that.

Question: How realistic should the patient simulator be?

Patient simulators can be low-,mid-, or high-fidelity manikins. The higher the fidelity, the more realistic and lifelike the simulator and its replication of the human body’s various functions. Let’s ask the first question again- what skills need to be taught with the simulator? If you need it for repetitive task training like starting IVs or inserting urinary catheters, a simple low-fidelity manikin will do. If you need individuals to learn how to change dressing or practice suturing, simple silicon wound models will be enough. If you want to teach something like performing CPR, you’ll need basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation manikins. For assessing vital signs or training on nursing skills, you might be better off with mid-fidelity manikins. This can help them figure out whether it’s safe to give a medicine depending on the current vital signs. Most high-fidelity manikins will mimic complex body systems (for ex- the chest may rise and fall, there may be chest and bowel sounds, and you may be able to feel a pulse) and help train on complex clinical skills and trauma or emergency cases. Some high-fidelity manikins may also be able to speak or cry. Basically, to understand what kind of fidelity you want, you’ll need to think about the complexity of the task you need to train on.

Question: What is your budget?

Another important question is to ask what your budget is for the patient simulator. For this, you need to consider what functionalities you will need in the simulator. Will you need a very high-fidelity manikin or will a mid- or low-fidelity one be enough? High-fidelity manikins tend to be costlier than mid- and low-fidelity ones. Sometimes, people end up buying the high-fidelity ones and then many of those functions go unused either because they are not required for the scope of the learning or because people aren’t even aware of those functions. Other times, people buy low- or mid-fidelity manikins, but then have to buy better ones eventually. You may also need to ask yourself- “Do I need to buy a high-fidelity manikin for this or distribute the budget elsewhere in the lab too?” To be honest, neither fidelity is superior to the other, they both have their pros and cons. While high-fidelity manikins are more realistic, low-fidelity ones allow students to learn at their pace. The decision may come to what skills need to be taught.

Ultimately, you need to make a decision based on what functions you need and what skills you need to teach while making a trade-off between cost and fidelity (but accommodating the fidelity needs of the skills to be taught).

Simulation is the only way to provide learners the opportunity to deal with rare and life-threatening situations without causing any risk to real patients. And even then, when they make mistakes, they get to see the implications of the errors and are allowed the chance to rectify their mistakes. Over the last few years, this technology has revolutionized how we approach healthcare and the quality of patient care, and it’s exciting to think about what the future holds for it.

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Medical Simulation Training: Market Share, Projected Growth

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What are the Challenges Involved in Saving Lives in Hospitals?

The responsibility of saving lives that befalls our hospitals and the Indian healthcare system as a whole is thwarted by the several challenges it faces on all fronts. Together, these can affect not only the quality of care delivered but whether people seek that care at all.

Lack of Awareness

The first challenge to delivering effective healthcare is a lack of awareness in the public. From ignoring their symptoms and believing they don’t need treatment to more concrete barriers like affordability and a lack of resources, a lot of things get in the way of saving lives. This may be attributed to factors like poor education, poor functional literacy, and a low priority for health.

Lack of Access

Even those who are aware may not have access to quality healthcare owing to financial, organizational, social, and cultural barriers, even in places where they are available. This brings us to physical accessibility. Living further away from town increases the odds of disease, malnourishment, weakness, and premature death.

Shortage of Healthcare Workers

Not only do hospitals need to have an adequate number of working personnel, they need people who are appropriately trained and employable. By introducing simulation-led training in our medical and nursing curricula, we can create more prepared and capable healthcare workers in the future.

A 2019 study discovered that we only have one doctor for every 1457 people and 1.7 nurses for every 1000 people. And the manpower we do have is distributed unevenly as most prefer to work in more developed areas where their own quality of life and that of their children will be superior. The public healthcare system is also not allocated enough funds. This difference in quality of care drives people to prefer private healthcare, which is often not affordable for most. People in rural areas are discouraged and less likely to seek treatment when they travel far to government-run healthcare facilities and find a lack of qualified professionals and inadequate infrastructure. 

Additionally, we only have one bed for every 2,239 people. These shortages in personnel, PPE kits, oxygen cylinders, and ambulances posed great challenges in saving lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Cost of Healthcare

The inconsistent costs and lack of cost regulation in the private sector often ends up as huge medical bills, specially in emergency cases. For example, because many families aren’t able to shoulder the increasingly high costs of infant care and pre-natal surgical procedures, the infant mortality rate in India is one of the highest in the world. In contrast, public healthcare facilities are cheap or free, but unreliable.

Poor Soft Skills

The ability to effectively communicate with the patients and their frustrated family members, and within the team itself is crucial to the success of a case more than you’d think. Theory alone will not prepare individuals for dealing with patients, so a good way to build communication skills and other soft skills is to incorporate simulation-led training.

Lack of Openness to Digitalization

Another challenge faced is the lack of openness to digitalization among the hospital staff. For several reasons, as the world becomes increasingly digitalized, hospitals need to catch up too. But not everyone may be comfortable with incorporating it to refine existing procedures. Doctors may also be set in their ways and show no interest in learning the new tools.

Less Emphasis on Preventive Care

Preventive care can usually solve a lot of problems in terms of misery and financial losses, and avoid worse problems along the road. But most people either don’t know or don’t care about general preventive care. This not only saves money for the patient, but also reduces the burden on the limited healthcare infrastructure.

As we advance technologically, with more facilities, there will always be newer challenges to address. What’s important is to keep going forward and create a reliable healthcare system for everyone.

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Best Manikins and Simulators at the Lowest Prices by SEM Trainers

Getting the best of anything can be tough when you’re on a budget, you may have to make some compromises.

Whether you’re a hospital or medical training authority, if you’re out buying medical manikins and simulators, you don’t have to settle for all low-fidelity manikins or all the most basic versions. It is possible to get a combination of whatever fidelity, features, and simulators you need.

For now, let’s focus on our catalog of medical simulators.

Advanced Life Support Simulators

Advanced Life Support is a set of life-saving protocols and skills beyond basic life support, for providing help with circulation and airway management. We offer over 120 ALS simulators with the most lifelike features and responsive parts to facilitate superior ALS training. With so many options for adult, child, newborn, and debriefing manikins, you won’t have to look anywhere else!

Advanced Trauma Life Support Simulators

Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) simulators help train students in management of acute trauma cases that need surgical emergency care. The goal is to maximize management in the golden hour (the first hour after trauma), and save a life. At SEM Trainers, we provide 55 state-of-the-art ATLS simulators. For instance, our Adam-X-ALS Human Patient Simulator is the most-realistic trauma support training simulator, yet it comes in 3 variants (levels 1, 2, and 3) so you get to choose whichever suits your training needs.

Airway Management Simulators

With 52 realistic, responsive adult and child airway management simulators, you’ll be able to teach students everything about the critical skill of maintaining or restoring someone’s breathing.

Basic Life Support Simulators

Whether it’s dealing with severe illness or a life-threatening injury, our Basic Life Support (BLS) manikins will make learners skillful in providing medical care until ALS arrives. Choose from AED trainers, adult, child, or newborn manikins, and BLS and CPR accessories.

Clinical Skills Trainers

In India, nearly 98,000 people die every year because of preventable medical mistakes. Our manikins and simulators for skills like auscultation, catheterization, laparoscopy, injections, and many more skills help ensure better learning so that mistakes aren’t made as often.

Emergency Rescue Simulators

Not only will these help students learn how to address an emergency situation and move the patient to a safe place, it will teach them to care for injuries and casualties. This includes everything from simulated wounds to artificial blood.

Gynecology Simulators

Bringing a new life into this world is a task like none other, so it’s important for medical professionals to be able to deal with any possible complication while managing to save both the mother and the baby. Our gynecology simulators include everything from life-size mother and baby simulators and breast trainers to cervixes and hysterectomy trainers to create another generation of increasingly capable gynecologists.

Obstetrics Simulators

Some skills just cannot be taught using only books. We offer 70 different trainers and simulators for excellent obstetrics training and teaching important skills like episiotomy and Leopold’s maneuvers along with different deliveries.

Nursing Skills and Patient Care Simulators

Through over 200 nursing skills simulators like adult patient care, geriatric patient care, pediatric patient care, neonatal patient care, ostomy care, decubitus care, and enema administration simulators, we help prepare confident, competent nurses to aid the quality of patient care.

Orthopedic Workshop Bones

Using biomechanical test blocks and artificial bones- both manufactured by 3B Scientific, a widely reputed brand, optimal training in orthopedics can be achieved. The foam blocks are perfect for testing bone density and simulating different characteristics like cortical thickness, and the artificial bones resemble genuine human bones in form and characteristics, simulating the hard outer cortical shell and the softer inner cancellous bone.

TCCC Training Manikins

Tactical Combat Casualty Care is one field where training is nearly impossible without simulators and manikins because of the inaccessibility of training on individuals injured in combat situations. Simulators like these with lifelike eviscerations, amputations, and gunshots wounds make TCCC training not only possible, but effective.

Patient Monitor Simulators

Real-time feedback is a big part of the effectiveness and success of simulation-led training. These patient monitor screens display vital signs, work with training scenarios, and provide hyper-realistic interfaces.

In addition to that, we provide several simulation kits, surgery simulators, human patient simulators, transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) simulators, virtual reality simulators, and virtual dissection tables. We deliver all of these premium simulators and manikins at the lowest prices.

With more than 600 affordable-yet-premium anatomy-training manikins, 1200 medical simulators, and many more in our inventory, you’ll be glad you came to us first!

For enquiries, you can call us on 02632 257259 or drop us a mail at sem@semtrainers.com

Improving Healthcare Outcomes with Simulation | Quality Improvement

Whether it’s the massive population that stands second in the world or the large pool of well-trained medical professionals in the country, the healthcare industry in India is one that is quickly making its way to the top. And with the opportunity, comes responsibility.

Simulation is widely credited as not just a powerful education tool, but also an instrument for quality improvement. By creating a safe, interactive learning environment and effecting various technical and soft skills, it creates the perfect opportunity for improving healthcare outcomes in patients.

Simulation creates an interactive learning experience

By creating guided simulated experiences with a hint of substantial aspects of the real world, simulation is able to provide an interactive learning experience and platform. This builds skills and fundamentals in learners, effectively improving patient outcomes.

Simulation provides real-time feedback to learners

When students get immediate feedback through task trainers and systems, two things happen. If they are performing the skill correctly, it helps them proceed with the task more confidently. And if they are doing something wrong, they are corrected at the spot so they can correct their course of action instead of getting negative feedback at the end and feeling disparaged because of it.

Simulation offers an unmatched opportunity to analyze the students’ performance

By creating structured scenarios with events and details that replicate features of real-world clinical situations, simulation is able to provide access to events that cannot otherwise be directly observed. This results in an extraordinary learning experience, and ultimately, into better patient and healthcare outcomes.

Simulation provides a safe, controlled environment for learning

Through simulation-led medical training, students are not only given the freedom to make mistakes, but they are given the unique opportunity to learn from their mistakes. Interestingly, being free to make mistakes also means that they feel free to play around with the functions and explore them. And this makes for healthcare professionals who are not left clueless at an unexpected clinical situation, who are able to deal with any situation that presents itself. This fundamentally results in better healthcare outcomes.

Simulation makes repeated, hands-on practice possible

Without simulation, it would be difficult to provide students with the exposure needed to build certain technical skills that can only be perfected with practice; clearly, theory alone isn’t enough. While the greatest benefit of simulation may be that it allows hands-on practice, much of the skill comes from repeated practice. By creating capable healthcare professionals, the number of errors are highly reduced, and the quality of patient care, immensely improved.

Simulation avoids inconvenience to real patients

It is obvious that when simulation eliminates the need to have freshers practice on real patients, removing that risk, inconvenience, and breach of privacy for the patients means the quality of patient care and healthcare outcomes are greatly improved.

Simulation can highlight communication issues

Many medical errors and patient harm instances can be traced back to failings in communicating effectively. Simulation can shine a light on these and, in turn, help improve the systems and processes by improving team and communication skills.

Simulation can help improve outcomes for life-threatening conditions

Because simulation is able to replicate real-life situations in a safe way, we can simulate life-threatening situations just as easily as everyday situations in the real clinical setting. With simulation, researchers don’t have to wait for rare events to happen to be able to observe them. And by reproducing life-threatening and catastrophic conditions as often as we want, it can be helpful in improving our approach to such situations.

Simulation makes better research possible

The benefits of simulation are not just received through education; it also makes better research possible. For example, simulation can be used to study the impact of noise on anesthetists’ stress level in operation theaters. It can give insight into things in a way that nothing else can. And better research automatically improves the quality of healthcare outcomes globally.  Simulation-based research may be the biggest way in which simulation is helping improve healthcare outcomes and the quality of patient care.

The effort to improve healthcare outcomes with simulation does face a few challenges. For instance, the outcomes may depend on the participants, the setting, and the scenario, and it may be hard to pinpoint what led to the change in outcome.

Regardless, through all the direct and indirect benefits it has to offer, it is evident that simulation is effective at improving healthcare systems and processes. It can help streamline protocols without involving patients and help identify latent safety threats as well. It can also be used to test new approaches before adopting them in the real clinical setting. Additionally, measuring patient outcomes helps adopt best practices, and in turn, further improve outcomes.

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How to Perform Life-Saving CPR on Adults, Children, and Infants | by SEM Trainers

When most people talk about learning life-saving CPR, they either think they won’t be able to do it or wonder if they’ll ever really be in that situation. But did you know that around 45% of cardiac arrest victims are saved because a bystander did CPR on them?

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure and a first-aid, life-saving skill that can restore breathing and heartbeat in someone who has gone into cardiac arrest and isn’t breathing properly. Whether it’s from a heart attack, near-drowning, or other causes, CPR can save a life using procedures like chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth breathing. While this doesn’t mean that someone saved with CPR will magically be treated, CPR can keep blood flowing and keep the brain and other organs till medical help arrives.

The thing is- you don’t need to be a health professional to do CPR, anyone can learn to do it. By learning life-saving CPR, you can not only save the life of a stranger some day, but also of a friend or family member.

How to do Chest Compressions

  1. Lay the patient on their back, kneeling next to them.
  2. Put the heel of your hand on their chest- in the center of the lower half of the breastbone. Put your other hand on top of the first and interlock your fingers.
  3. Bring yourself above the patient’s chest, and with straight arms, use your body weight to press down on their chest by 1/3 of their chest depth.
  4. Release the pressure. One compression is complete.

How to give Mouth-to-Mouth

  1. Put one hand on their forehead and the other under their chin to open their airway.
  2. Use one hand to pinch their nose closed, and the other to open their mouth.
  3. Now, take a breath in and, placing your lips on theirs to create a seal, blow into their mouth for 1 second and watch the chest rise. After the breath, watch the chest fall, and listen and feel for the air being expelled.
  4. Then, take another breath and repeat.

If the chest does not rise, check the mouth for any blockages and remove them. The head should be tilted and no air should be leaking out from your mouth to theirs.

In 2 minutes, you should give 5 sets of 30 compressions followed by 2 breaths for each set. If you’re only doing compressions, do 100-120 compressions per minute. Although, alternating between compressions and breaths can help you do it longer.

Keep doing this till help arrives, you get exhausted, or the patient starts coughing, talking, breathing normally, or moving again- then put them in the recovery position.

How to do CPR on an Adult

  1. First, check if the scene is safe to help. Don’t put yourself or others in danger.
  2. Now, look for a response from the patient- loudly ask their name and squeeze their shoulder.
  3. If they don’t respond, call 108 or ask someone else to call, but don’t leave the patient alone.
  4. Check if their mouth and throat are clear and remove blockages like vomit, blood, or food. Tilt their head back and lift their chin.
  5. Check their breathing. Even if the patient is breathing properly, stay with them till help arrives. If they’re not breathing properly, start chest compressions immediately using both hands.
  6. Attach a defibrillator, if available.

How to do CPR on a Child

The process of giving CPR to a child is almost the same as that for an adult. The only difference here is that you’ll probably do the compressions with one hand instead of 2 if the child’s chest is too small for 2 hands.

How to do CPR on an Infant

For babies less than 1 year old, the process is almost the same as that for an adult or a child. There are a few differences, like when checking for a response from the baby, you shouldn’t shake them as it can cause shaken baby syndrome, and ultimately, even death. Also, for infants, you’ll do the compressions with only 2 fingers. And for mouth-to-mouth, you’ll need to tilt their head back very slightly and lift their chin without resting your hands on their throat before taking a breath in and covering their mouth and nose with your mouth and blowing for 1 second. You’ll watch the chest rise, and then you’ll watch the chest fall after the breath, and listen and feel for signs of air being expelled.

You really don’t need to be a doctor or a medical professional to be able to do CPR on someone and save a life. The key is to start as soon as you can.

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Medical Simulation Training: Market Share, Projected Growth

Over the years, we have recognized the potential of using simulation training to further the state of the global healthcare system. With recent technological advancements, simulators have not only started gaining recognition and acceptance, but are starting to become the norm. Numerous researches have been carried out to predict where medical simulation training will reach by the year 2030.

Expected Market Growth by 2030

In 2020, the global medical simulation market was valued at $1,687.5 million- this is the total product and service sales revenue it totalled in that entire year. In 2021, this was $1.8 billion. And this is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 13.9% as of 2021. And by 2028, this rate could reach anywhere from 14.4% to 16.3%. So, the market is projected to reach $6,688.6 million by 2030. That is almost 6.7 billion dollars! Even within the medical simulation market, the market share of models and simulators is the highest of all the products and services available. 

What is driving the growth of the medical simulation market?

As technology advances and we create a better global healthcare system for ourselves, we see a rise in the growth of medical simulation devices in our hospitals and our medical and nursing education systems or facilities. We have observed a series of rapid advancements in healthcare technologies over the last few decades, and continue to do so with technologies like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, 3D printing, and nanotechnology, and these will continue to shape the future of healthcare for years to come. And given how a number of invasive techniques are starting to become the standard for many surgical procedures, this is further driving the market growth of medical simulation as there is a need for skilled professionals to perform surgeries like laparoscopy.

We are really starting to adopt medical simulation

A major factor for the adoption of medical simulation is the frequency of medical errors that happen globally. Statistically, around 5.2 million medical errors happen every year in India. Of these, around 98,000 people die – every year, due to medical negligence and mistakes. With the quality of technology we have at our disposal today, that is just not acceptable. There is an urgent need to identify and remedy this. Reducing medical errors not only results in saving lives, but it also reduces administration errors, preparation errors, and overall costs.

The difference that simulation training makes

It has been proved research after research that simulators and manikins have been playing an indispensable role in how we approach healthcare and how we train the next generation of medical and nursing professionals each time. Simulation is the only teaching method able to provide repeated hands-on experience with real-time feedback in a safe, controlled environment- without causing any harm or inconvenience to real patients. It creates a forgiving environment that not only lets learners make mistakes and learn from them, but because they have the permission to make mistakes, it gives them the freedom to look around and play with all the features and controls. It enables generations of aspirants to become skilled and capable enough before transitioning to the real clinical setting; it makes them competent enough to do that. This, in turn, also reduces healthcare costs. Additionally, the enhancement of clinical competence further fuels the market growth of the medical simulation market.

Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Growth Rate of Medical Simulation Training

As the pandemic unraveled in the last few months of 2020, with border restrictions and the ongoing healthcare crisis, the focus was predominantly on handling acute operational demands instead of on addressing training needs. The growth rate observed was only 1.5% as compared to the projected growth rate of 9.2% predicted before the pandemic.

Key Challenges Affecting the Demand for Medical Simulation

There is a communication and skill gap between simulation experts and clinical staff. Additionally, for a clinical skills lab to be successful, it is important to have the necessary amount of clinical staff skilled at running a simulation lab, handling the simulators, and being able to execute simulation scenarios that are accompanied by debriefing. Another challenge is the inability to deal with the problems posed by unreliable wireless connectivity in wireless simulators.

Things are really starting to pace up after the pandemic for the medical simulation industry. What the future holds for the industry will certainly be interesting to watch.

Goals and Objectives of a Clinical Skills Lab

What is a Clinical Skills Lab?

A clinical skills laboratory (or skill lab) is an educational facility which gives students, physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals the opportunity to learn relevant clinical and communication skills and build competency in them before transitioning to the real hospital setting with direct patient contact.

Why do we need a Clinical Skills Lab?

In many professions around the globe, students in colleges and universities learn a comprehensive amount of information. But it is not until they step out into the real world and get a job that they begin to learn the necessary skills needed to do their job. But it is not like this in the medical profession. Whether you are a doctor, a nurse, or a tech assistant, you need to know what you are doing. You cannot risk practicing on real patients and put their lives in danger or make them uncomfortable. You cannot jeopardize their safety and create a breach of their privacy.

In fact, the majority of mistakes (and serious mistakes) happen in the first few working years after licensure, and can be chalked up to a lack of experience. After years of theoretical learning, students are given a relatively short amount of time to acquaint themselves with the practical reality of the clinical setting. Before these labs came into existence, the acquisition of these relevant clinical skills depended on appropriate patient encounters and well-trained lecturers. Today, even the ratio of the number of students to the number of teachers is off. And with the amount of technical innovations in diagnosis and treatment, it becomes all the more important to incorporate skill labs to build skills in the learners.

A clinical skills lab is able to provide a controlled, safe, forgiving environment for creating realistic, hands-on, diverse learning experiences. It’s not the same as practicing on real patients, but it’s the next best thing. Apart from clinical skills, it helps build communication skills, cognitive skills, and a compassionate approach to patient care.

A clinical skills lab usually has a reception area, skill studios, an ICU simulation room, an operation theatre simulation room, a pediatric ICU simulation room, AV facilities in the rooms, surgical simulation suites, ultrasound training rooms, seminar halls, a board room, faculty lounges, a student lounge, and necessities like storage, safety systems, and HVAC. Personnel in attendance may include a chief coordinator, supporting departmental staff, nursing staff, a receptionist, and a biomedical engineer.

Goals and Objectives of a Clinical Skills Lab

  • To encourage and support learning through simulation technology and simulators, manikins, and trainers.
  • To provide a safe platform for hands-on learning experiences in order to build relevant clinical skills.
  • To provide a controlled, anxiety-free, and risk-free learning environment to students.
  • To provide a platform for repeated practice for mastery in relevant clinical skills –  for novices and experts alike.
  • To build a strong foundation of the fundamentals in the learners.
  • To accommodate the unique learning needs of students with diverse backgrounds, abilities, and educational experiences.
  • To provide educational materials for students, faculty, and staff of medical and nursing colleges.
  • To encourage a life-long learning model.
  • To make sure to include all environmental factors and make the learning experience as realistic and authentic as possible.
  • To integrate clinical simulation into medical and nursing curricula.
  • To increase the preparedness of student learners before transitioning to the real hospital setting.
  • To increase their preparedness for dealing with high acuity cases.
  • To build strong communication skills.
  • To enable learners to think on their feet.
  • To enable learners to make critical decisions.
  • To ensure adaptation of best practices in the industry
  • To prepare students to be able to handle emergency situations
  • To encourage and demonstrate the power of team-building and collaboration.
  • To build problem solving and decision-making skills through simulations and case scenarios.
  • To provide learners with debriefing and positive feedback of their performance.
  • To provide learners with real-time feedback through simulator screens, allowing them to reflect and use critical thinking during the process.
  • To build dexterity in various clinical skills like examination, diagnostic reasoning, communication, and execution of clinical techniques.

The purpose of clinical skills lab or simulation-led medical education is not to replace traditional teaching methods, but to complement them. Over the years, these labs have come to be widely accepted as an essential part of medical education and colleges, and have helped numerous learners become job-ready in the medical industry, proving to be an indispensable asset to the industry.

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Why We Need Clinical skills Labs to Improve Skills Based Medical Education

Dexterity in various clinical skills such as examination, diagnostic reasoning, communication, and execution of clinical techniques is indispensable to the success of medical education paradigms. Over the years, the adoption of simulation-led training into the process has shown tremendous improvements in skill competency in the aspirants. By supplementing traditional learning approaches with simulation-led training, learners get hands-on experience along with diverse skill development and come out as confident, competent medical professionals able to handle the pressures of the real clinical setting.

Why do we need a Clinical Skills Lab or Simulation Centre?

Not only has there been a disproportionate increase in the number of students to that of trainers, the rapid advances in medical technology has made it harder for learners to receive optimal training through theory alone and reduced clinical skills standards among medical students. But for many reasons, it is not always possible to practice on real patients. Some of them may be clinically unstable, some may not be comfortable to be tended to by inexperienced learners, and for some, it might jeopardize patient safety and feel like a breach of their privacy.

What happens in a Clinical Skills Lab or Simulation Centre?

A clinical Skills Lab or Simulation Centre offers an immersive environment for healthcare professionals to develop clinical skills, communication skills, cognitive skills, and a compassionate approach to patient care. This is a controlled, safe, and forgiving environment for them to get hands-on experience for diverse scenarios. The experience provided by such a lab won’t be the same as practicing and learning on a real patient, but it’s the next best thing, benefitting novices and experts alike. And as they say, practice makes perfect.

These labs and centres usually, but not necessarily, have a reception area, skill studios, an ICU simulation room, an operation theatre simulation room, a pediatric ICU simulation room, AV facilities in the rooms, surgical simulation suites, ultrasound training rooms, seminar halls, a board room, faculty lounges, a student lounge, and necessities like storage, safety systems, and HVAC. Personnel in attendance may include a chief coordinator, supporting departmental staff, nursing staff, a receptionist, and a biomedical engineer.

With the help of state-of-the-art equipment, anatomic simulators, and sometimes, real actors, diverse scenarios and real life acute medical conditions can be simulated for students to learn and practice. Through these, they get to experience a hint of what kind of situations they can hope to expect when they transition to a real hospital. Additionally, it helps build the aforementioned skills in them.

Many of these high-fidelity simulators provide real-time feedback, but feedback is also offered through an instructor overseeing the scenario. The repeated practice also shortens their learning curve. By including aspects like bathroom spaces to simulate bathroom falls in the scenarios, the learning experience is made more realistic.

To complete the successful simulation experience, the participants are observed, analyzed, and debriefed on their thought processes and actions to improve their performance and learning outcomes. This is one of the most important aspects of simulation-led training.

Benefits of Clinical Skills Labs and Simulation Centres

Such a facility achieves the following:

  • It redefines medical education training and enables independent student learning
  • It delivers hands-on learning experiences
  • It accommodates the different learning requirements of students that come from different walks of life with various foundations, capabilities, and educational experiences
  • It increases preparedness in the learners before their transition to the real hospital setting, and it enables them to effectively deal with high-risk cases
  • It builds effective communication skills, cognitive skills, and psychomotor skills in the learners
  • It builds and highlights the role of collaboration and team building

Challenges to Establishing and Running Clinical Skills Labs and Simulation Centres

Given its obvious benefits to skill-based medical education, a clinical skills and simulation lab is an indispensable part of medical education for various positions today. But establishing and running such a lab comes with its own challenges.

From its beginning, setting up and running such a lab requires a hefty investment; this includes the cost of procurement and maintenance of simulators and their consumables, staff allowance, HVAC maintenance, and electricity bill, among others. Adjusting with the realism of the simulators is another challenge. Additionally, there are the challenges of time fixed for simulation training and teaching along with asset and resource availability and accessibility. There is the need to carefully balance time allotted for curriculum teaching and for simulation-based teaching.

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3 Tips to Choose the Right Manikins for Medical Simulation with SEM Trainers

Simulation brings a lot of new benefits to medical training, like hands-on training, a risk-free environment, and building a number of different skills. And with the medical simulation industry growing, now, there are more kinds of manikins than ever. But with so many options available, how do instructors decide which ones to get for their simulation labs?

How to Choose the Right Manikins for Your Medical Simulation Lab?

Although there are a myriad of simulators available, ultimately, there are 3 main factors to consider that will help you pick the right manikins for Medical Simulation to fulfill your needs- features, cost, and fidelity.

1.It should fulfill the purpose

The first thing to think about is what you will want to use the manikins- which skills you will want to teach using the manikin. For example, if you will be teaching airway management, these are the questions to ask: Will you need both adult and child manikins? Will you need the defibrillation features? Will you need intubation functionality? (..and so on) You might also want to avoid overspending on a manikin with too many extra features that will end up never being used. What is the point of splurging on a manikin that you will only use to 40% of its potential?

Let’s take another example. Suppose you need the students to learn how to place a catheter and get proper fluid return. The KERi Complete will be enough for that. But if you want them to learn more comprehensive diagnostics and patient care, you will either need to go for the Advanced KERi which is equipped with an IV and blood pressure training arm, or complement the KERi Complete with a training arm purchased separately (and then spend the rest of the money on other things for the simulation lab).

2.Consider your budgets

While we would all always like to get our hands on all the state-of-the-art, high-tech and the most high-fidelity manikins for training, in reality, it is not always possible to do so. (But fortunately, at SEM Trainers, we bring you dozens of high-quality, reliable manikins to choose from that will suit your needs). More often than not, we have to work with limited budgets due to limited funding available. That is why instead of splurging all your money on a couple extraordinary manikins with way too many features, it might be a good idea to figure out your requirements and distribute your budget across those. When looking for manikins, ask yourself questions like- Do I need all these features or will the one with fewer features do just as well? How much fidelity do I really need for teaching this particular skill? There may also be upfront or annual fees for add-ons like training, installation, warranties, and service fees to account for, so it’s always best to consider the entire expense before making a choice.

3.Think about the fidelity-cost trade-off

Manikins come in different fidelity levels. High-fidelity manikins look and behave more realistically compared to the low-fidelity ones. Some skills require the scenario to be more realistic and believable- they may be better off using those high-fidelity manikins that offer a higher degree of realism. But high-fidelity manikins are far more expensive than the low-fidelity ones. And while it can’t always be a bad thing to go for the high-fidelity manikin everytime, the truth is that you have a budget to stick to. Ultimately, you have to make a trade-off between the level of fidelity offered and the cost of a manikin. Sometimes, you will have to make do with the level of fidelity that is just good enough for the purpose.

So, if you are an instructor, by keeping in mind the purpose of the manikin (which will decide the features you will need), the budget you have available (which will be best distributed according to your needs), and the level of fidelity you can afford at a convenient cost, you will be able to make the right decisions about the manikins to get for your simulation lab.

Check out the range of manikins offered by SEM Trainers:

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