3 Questions to Ask Before Buying Your Next Patient Simulator

Shyam Gajrani / December 24, 2022December 29, 2022 / Clinical Skills, Medical Simulation, Medicine, Nursing Education, Patient Simulator, Simulation-based Learning

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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What are the Challenges Involved in Saving Lives in Hospitals?

Shyam Gajrani / November 26, 2022December 15, 2022 / Clinical Skills, Equipment, Medical Simulation, Medicine, Nursing Education, Simulation-based Learning

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

Shyam Gajrani / November 15, 2022November 24, 2022 / Clinical Skills, Medical Simulation, Medicine, Nursing Education, Simulation-based Learning

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

Shyam Gajrani / October 26, 2022November 7, 2022 / Clinical Skills, Medical Simulation, Medicine, Nursing Education, Simulation-based Learning

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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Benefits of Virtual Reality Simulators in Medical Simulation Training

Shyam Gajrani / June 28, 2022June 28, 2022 / Clinical Skills, Equipment, Medical Simulation, Medicine, Nursing Education, Simulation-based Learning

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that no matter what life throws at us, we can keep going. While everyone switched to online learning, it was not possible to learn practical medical and surgical skills on a video call. So, we adopted Virtual Reality into simulation training for learning medical and surgical skills so students can still learn practical skills. But Virtual Reality simulators is much more.

What is Virtual Reality and How Does it Apply to Medical Training?

Simulation can be classified into physical, virtual reality, and hybrid. It has already proved to be a widely accepted success in training. It gives students the opportunity to practice procedures wherever they want, whenever they want to. Learners can practice repeatedly in a safe environment, with real-time feedback, and without the risk of causing harm to real patients. But what happens if we introduce virtual reality to simulation training? Let’s first understand what virtual reality is.

Virtual Reality is a computer-generated simulated, 3D environment that you can realistically interact with using special electronic equipment (like a headset with a screen inside or gloves with sensors). There are sensory stimuli present, and how you interact with it partially determines what will happen next. For example, if you wear VR glasses and play a certain game using that, you will feel like you are in the game. In fact, it can be so surreal that many get scared while playing a game with zombies or riding a roller coaster virtually. Through the use of various senses, it creates an immersive experience for you by putting you in scenarios where you are the actor and what you do determines what happens next in the environment.

Using this concept, diverse realistic scenarios can be created for training students in medical and surgical skills. In these scenarios, they enter 360° simulated environments where they experience various sights and sounds that help create a virtual reality.

Today, VR simulators are more realistic and affordable. And research has repeatedly proven the benefits of using VR in simulation training. Without enough hands-on training, students struggle with the development of some cognitive, technical, and socio-emotional skills. This was a problem even before the pandemic- it is hard to provide enough learning opportunities for the students to develop practical skills. VR has helped immensely with this as it allows repeated practice and helps create experiences that might not be so easily accessible(and which may be stressful or rare), and does it without risks or pressure, and without time or space limitations.

Simulating Real Life with Virtual Reality Training

Using virtual reality to train learners on technical skills lets them feel the stress of a real-life scenario without the risks of the real one. And it helps them develop the skills through repeated hands-on practice. Not only are the scenarios realistic, some of them portray some of the not-so-common clinical scenarios where learners are bound to make mistakes. This helps them deal with such situations when they happen in real life.

Simulating a Multiplayer Scenario

Using virtual reality, we can prepare a multiplayer scenario, allowing learners to collaborate and work a case as a team. It lets them interact with each other the way they would do if it was real life. They can identify who gathered which kind of data (like vital signs, physical exam results, case history, and point-of-care testing), and can identify gaps in that data and fill in the blanks. They can delegate responsibilities. Virtual reality training also allows room for interprofessional simulation like by allowing learners from nursing and case management to communicate and collaborate.

Benefits of Virtual Reality Training

There’s a whole myriad of benefits offered by using VR simulation for training:

Realistic learning environments that can be reproduced
Repeated hands-on training
Diverse scenarios (even those that can’t be created otherwise)
Gamification of learning
Performance feedback
Continuous peer interaction

And this leads to:

Better student motivation and presence
Active learning
Improved decision-making abilities
Improved critical thinking abilities
Better communication skills
Helps them identify their strengths and weaknesses
Overall, it leads to better learning and dexterity in the technical skills

Also, virtual reality simulators usually come with an in-built objective evaluation system to track and provide feedback about a learner’s performance after each procedure. This gives various parameters like the time, bleeding, bleeding volume, injuries caused, and a pass or fail remark.

It is evident that incorporating virtual reality into simulation training is capable of delivering better results than using traditional training methods. Virtual reality simulators offer a range of benefits from providing learners with a platform where they can engage in repeated hands-on training to creating scenarios that would not be possible otherwise.

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Simulation in Echocardiography: Can it Fill the Demand?

Shyam Gajrani / June 14, 2022June 27, 2022 / Medical Simulation, Nursing Education, Simulation-based Learning

Echocardiography, which is the use of ultrasound waves to observe the action of the heart, is known to be notoriously difficult to learn and requires extensive training to master. Can simulation in echocardiography be the answer to the growing demand?

Echocardiography needs a lot of skill to master

Today, cardiovascular diseases are one of the most common causes of death around the globe. And as they become more prevalent, the demand for diagnosis also increases. Since echocardiography is an affordable, non-invasive imaging technique that delivers immediate results, it is of importance to see how we can improve the learning process for aspiring learners. But it is difficult to learn.

Apart from being technically competent and practically skilled in what they do, echocardiographers need to understand:

The physics behind the modalities
Sufficient knowledge of the anatomy
The physiology and pathology of the heart

It is hard enough to handle the transducer and connect it to the heart’s anatomy, but they need to understand the basics of ultrasound physics and extract and assess information of the 3D heart from a 2D image.

Challenges to Learning Echocardiography

A 2019 study by Dieden, Carlson, and Gudmundsson discovered the main challenges to learning echocardiography, and the things that could aid the learning. Students found the main challenges to be:

The projections: It can be a sizeable task to steer the transducer and obtain a projection, and then make sense of it. And it can be hard for the students to link the projections to where in the heart the ultrasound beam cut.
Handling the probe: It can be hard for learners to figure out where to place, angle, and turn the transducer for some projections. They can be clueless about how to position and turn the transducer if they never have any practice.
Connecting ultrasound physics and measurements to practical application: Students can find it difficult to link the theory of ultrasound physics to practical performance with the machine.

Things That Help Students Learn Better

The study mentioned above also stated 5 things that would improve learning:

Immediate feedback: Real-time feedback and correction from instructors and the screens on the task trainers can improve the learning process; like if the screen can tell them whether they have placed the transducer correctly
Playing with the ultrasound machine: it allows learners to use the machine firsthand where no button is off-limits and nothing can go wrong
Video lectures
The possibility to swiftly alternate between practice and theory: while getting hands-on experience with the ultrasound machine helps learners practice what they just learned, it also helps them understand when and how to apply some concepts and measurements in the clinical setting
Learning by their mistakes in a risk-free environment without serious consequences: Students learn to accept that making mistakes is a positive part of the learning process and can make them better at the task

It is interesting to see that 4 out of the 5 things mentioned above can be achieved with the help of manikins and simulators. Using a manikin helps students learn echocardiography in a way that lets them truly understand the fundamentals behind what they are learning, and can even help learners link the anatomy of the heart, placing the probe, and the location of the beam. Echocardiographic simulation can aid traditional training strategies and improve their efficiency.

It can be hard to get real heart patients for learners to operate on. Additionally, if they do learn by operating on real patients, it can make the patients uncomfortable, put them at risk, and breach their privacy. And it can be hard for teachers to explain concepts to learners while managing the needs of a live patient.

It is well-known how simulators allow repeated practice of diverse scenarios ranging from high-risk to rare, and have been adopted into medical and surgical training. Numerous studies have proved that using simulations and mannequins for learning echocardiography is largely beneficial.

By incorporating simulation in echocardiography, learners profit by shorter learning times(by accelerating the learning process), better outcomes, and lower complication rates. They learn to manipulate the transducer better and angulate it to the skin safely, and comprehend the projections easily. Finally, incorporating simulation in echocardiography helps produce competency.

Top 10 Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) Medical Simulators You’ll Need | SEM Trainers

Shyam Gajrani / May 23, 2022May 28, 2022 / Medical Simulation, Medicine, Nursing Education, Simulation-based Learning

Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) are guidelines for providing immediate medical care for life-threatening injuries on the battlefield. Training for TCCC skills can be provided in 3 phases (care under fire, tactical field care, and tactical evaluation care). Students learn the management of trauma care and blast related injuries, and handle hemorrhage control and airway management. Learners cannot be assigned to real patients for handling traumatic combat injuries, but with the help of hyper-realistic simulators, they get all the practice they might need!

Here are some of our powerful TCCC simulators:

Casualty Care Rescue Randy – powered by Strategic Operations Hyper-Realistic® technology

The three most preventable causes of death are massive bleeding, airway obstruction, and tension pneumothorax. This one is a hyper-realistic full-body manikin that is perfect for training on the procedures that treat these 3 conditions. This manikin holds 3-4 liters of blood and simulates a 2-3 psi blood pressure.

Tactical Combat Casualty Care Simulator with Major Vascular Injuries – TCCS 2

This full-body simulator is great for realistically training combat trauma care for major vascular injuries for hemorrhage management and airway control using common wound patterns of combat. Durable in the toughest training scenarios, this simulator is water resistant and great for indoor and outdoor training for the military, government forces, medical rescue, and private security. It is remote-controlled and simple to operate, and comes with an instructor interface tablet with simulation logs and self-diagnosis. Use it for high threat extraction training and realistic TCCC field training scenarios.

Tactical Combat Casualty Care Simulator with Traumatic Amputations – TCCS 3

A full-body TCCC simulator for training combat trauma care for traumatic amputation injuries that are above the left elbow and above the left knee along with an amputation at the upper right thigh above the tourniquet line. Highly durable in the toughest training scenarios and water resistant, this simulator is great for indoor and outdoor training. With its lifelike tissue, it is great for training of hemorrhage management and airway control, high threat extraction training, and realistic TCCC field training scenarios.

Tactical Combat Casualty Care Simulator with Traumatic Amputations and Gunshot Wounds – TCCS 4

This full-body simulator is great for training for multiple traumatic gunshot wounds (like sucking chest wounds) and amputation injuries above the left elbow and the left knee. Like the others, this is highly durable and water resistant, and great for training of hemorrhage management, airway control, high threat extraction training, and realistic TCCC field training scenarios.

Tactical Combat Casualty Care Simulator with Abdominal Evisceration – TCCS 5

A full-body simulator good for training combat trauma care for abdominal wounds with evisceration and a traumatic amputation above the right wrist. Highly durable and water resistant, and great for external hemorrhage and airway control, high threat extraction training, and realistic TCCC field training scenarios.

Tactical Combat Casualty Care Simulator with Gunshot Wounds – TCCS 1

Another full-body TCCC simulator for combat trauma care training of gunshot wound management, hemorrhage management, airway management, and trauma management related to the casualty’s breathing and circulation. Highly durable and water resistant, and great for hemorrhage management, airway control, high threat extraction training, and realistic TCCC field training scenarios.

Tactical Hemorrhage Control Trainer – THCT

This one is a full-sized, remotely-activated simulator for point-of-injury, tactical medicine training for law enforcement and first responders. With realistic and anatomically-accurate soft tissue, durability, and water resistance, this simulator has remotely-activated pulsatile bleeding, multiple injuries like gunshot wounds, stab wounds, and crushing injuries, and an amputation on the left leg above the knee for tourniquet application.

CPR Module for REALITi360 Patient Monitor Simulators

This one is a CPR module with detailed real-time visual feedback on CPR quality. A sensor keeps track of the rate, depth, and release of each compression, and the system evaluates CPR time, correct chest compressions, pressure depth status bar, pressure posture, and pressure CPR rhythm. The system can be worn on the wrist, deployed on a manikin, or even placed inside a manikin.

Hemorrhage Control Arm Trainer P102

A trainer for hemorrhage control on the upper extremity with realistic wound and bleeding simulation. Affordable and great for training of bleeding control and management of traumatic arm injuries. It has a deep laceration/stab wound, a large caliber gunshot wound, and a junctional wound in the shoulder.

Simulated Patient Monitor – REALITi Plus

A patient monitor that is a smart, integrated, and modular simulation ecosystem and lets medical educators run multiple scenarios – from basic to sophisticated. It is mobile, so you can conduct training anywhere- whether it’s an ambulance, a helicopter, a hospital, or a skills lab.

For meticulous tactical combat casualty care training with the help of simulators, call us at 02632 257259 or drop us a mail at sem@semtrainers.com today!

Nursing Skills Simulation: What you Need to Know?

Shyam Gajrani / April 13, 2021April 14, 2021 / Medical Simulation

“The very first requirement in a hospital is that it should do the sick no harm.”
– Florence Nightingale

Sending newly qualified nurses out into the real world to deal with patients and unexpected situations as they present themselves can manufacture inconvenience and risk that can be avoided. All skills take time and practice, but trial-and-error- is dangerous and unsuitable to a real clinical setting. Simulation is an extremely powerful tool to prepare these learners for the demands of a real hospital environment.

Nursing Skills Lab Setup

A nursing skills lab will be a safe, controlled environment equipped with full-body manikins, task trainers (lifelike anatomy models that help learners practice a skill by breaking down a task into smaller, simpler actions and allowing repeated practice), and other hospital equipment. This is a realistic platform for students to learn without the risk of harming or discomforting a patient. In a nursing skills lab, mistakes are opportunities to learn.

Some activities that are part of a nursing skills lab:

Blood Pressure Monitoring
Catheterization
Wound Care
Intramuscular Injections
Oxygenation Therapy
Head-to-toe Assessment
Tracheostomy Care

Nursing Skills Simulation

The purpose of nursing skills simulation is to prepare aspiring nurses to communicate, motivate, delegate, prioritize, make quick decisions, and respond to change in a real-life situation. It serves to acclimatize nursing students to the real-life clinical environment and gives them an idea of what to expect, developing confidence and acumen.

Simulation can be an excellent strategy to prepare learners to think on their feet, hone their management skills, and learn to make real-time patient care decisions before transitioning into the real world as qualified nurses. This is a safe environment to assess how they respond to unexpected events and whether they succumb or thrive under pressure. It can be a rich learning experience for aspiring student nurses. Nursing skills simulation is a great way to allow nursing students to experience dealing with patients first-hand in a controlled environment while allowing them to explore how to deal with errors.

Performing nursing skills simulation in skill lab by SEM Trainers & Systems

Roles & Scenarios in a Nursing Skills Lab

Learners may be assigned roles and placed in diverse scenarios making use of predetermined events. Some roles that may be assigned include:

A patient with a mental and/or physical health issue (or a manikin may be used as a patient)
A staff nurse tending to three patients, subordinates, and students
A healthcare assistant
A student performing a placement
An angry relative
A manager telling ward staff of a change of events
A doctor or a relative calling the ward

Once the roles are assigned, learners may be placed in scenarios that realistically model challenges likely to be faced by newly qualified nurses. Some of these are:

A patient suffering a cardiac arrest in presence of other patients.
Incorrect medication has been administered because of a wrong prescription.
An angry relative rambling on and distracting the nurse.
A demanding patient.
A person calling the ward to complain at a busy time.

Benefits of a Simulation Environment

The use of simulation in nursing furnishes a plethora of benefits to the learner:

Knowledge
Technical skills
Attitude
Motivation and satisfaction
Self-confidence
Reflection
Leadership
Efficiency and effectiveness
Patient safety

Nursing Skills Simulation: How it Works

Simulation is performed in three steps – planning, implementation, and evaluation.

1. Planning a Simulation

This involves developing realistic scenarios, writing scripts, and preparing the environment. This is done keeping in mind the learning objectives and the availability of realistic materials.

2. Implementing a Scenario

With the required material and decided objectives, students may be briefed at the venue. In this way, this step involves:

Briefing: Familiarizing students with the setting
Action: Conducting the scenario in 10-15 minutes
Debriefing: Reflecting on the simulation with positive reinforcement and analysis

3. Evaluating a Simulation

Finally, the students’ performance is assessed via formative and summative evaluations.

Simulators from SEM Trainers

If you’re looking to purchase medical simulators for the purpose of nursing skills training, SEM Trainers has premium-quality simulation products sourced from Germany, USA, Japan, and Europe.

GERi™ Complete Nursing Skills Manikin
KERi™ Complete Nursing Skills Manikin
Nurse Training Baby, New Born
3B Scientific® Patient Care Training Manikin PRO Models | Advanced Nursing Skills Development Manikins
Complete CRiSis™ Resuscitation Training System with Advanced Airway Management
Simulated Patient Monitor with Debriefing & CPR Feedback – REALITi Pro
Deluxe Infant Crisis Manikin
STAT Baby Advanced
Chest Drain Simulator
Hemorrhage Control Arm Trainer P102
NG Tube & Trach Skills Simulator
Pericardiocentesis Simulator
Patient Education Tracheostomy Care Set
Pneumothorax Training Manikin
Truman Trauma-X | Trauma Manikin
Adult Deluxe Airway Management Trainer
Advanced Infant Intubation Head with Board
Child Intubation Head
AED Trainer Plus 2
Basic Life Support Simulator
CPR
CPR-Torso Brad™Junior with Electronics, 7-year old
Baby Sani CPR Manikin
Auscultation Trainer and Smartscope™
Adult Auscultation Trainer with SimScope Wi-Fi Training Stethoscope
Blood Pressure Simulator
Catheterization Simulator Set BASIC
Epidural and Spinal Injection Trainer
Advanced Venipuncture and Injection Arm
Complete Intramuscular Injection Training Kit
I.v. Injection Arm P50/1
Newborn Intraosseous Infusion and Injection Leg
Advanced Patient Care Male Prostate Simulator
Episiotomy and Suturing Trainer
Suture Kit
Surgery Trainer
Suture Practice Arm
Trainer for Wound Care and Bandaging Techniques

Simulation has been shown to provide positive learning experiences for aspiring nursing students and improve their acumen and skills. It makes learners capable and contributes to patient safety across the world. Are you taking advantage of all the possibilities nursing skills simulation has to offer?

Contact SEM Trainers & Systems for All your Simulation Needs to get a Customised Solution:

Drop a mail – sem@semtrainers.com or

Make a call – +91 8849563724