Arkansas Children’s Hospital Takes Quantum Leap in Opening High-Tech Patient Simulation Program to Promote Safety

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Feb. 5 /PRNewswire/ — Like any fresh graduate on the first day of work, doctors and nurses get nervous. Their hands sweat, their hearts race and they might question their own decisions. But unlike most students who have just finished school, new medical personnel are often responsible for saving someone’s life in their first few days.

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Imagine, for a moment, that doctors and students could realistically practice the same procedure over and over before ever coming in contact with a patient. Wouldn’t parents prefer their children see these doctors? The ones who have honed their skills before they ever practiced medicine? Arkansas Children’s Hospital is making this possible.

Arkansas Children’s Hospital today opened a new pediatric simulation education center that will allow students, physicians and other medical personnel to polish their skills in near reality scenarios before putting them to use with actual patients. The result will be a safer experience for patients.

The Arkansas Children’s Hospital Pediatric Understanding and Learning through Simulation Education Center, or PULSE Center, is among the nation’s first simulation education centers dedicated entirely to pediatric care standards. Inside it, medical personnel will sharpen their skills by performing procedures on computerized, life-like Manikins that feature compressors that allow them to breathe and tubes that can simulate blood flow and administration of IVs. The physicians and students also will interact with lay people who are trained to portray patients and their families, allowing trainees to practice how to communicate when they actually are in emergency or exam rooms.

“Our hope is that by starting the PULSE Center, people will learn how to work in teams, how to better handle parents and how to manage in situations with upset children,” said Mary Cantrell, director of the PULSE Center. “This will make health care much safer for children here in Arkansas.”

The PULSE Center concept evolved as an extension of ACH’s mission to support excellence in teaching and clinical care. The facility will include two medical education theaters with their own debriefing rooms and six exams rooms equipped with either two-way mirrors or cameras. Trainees will be observed, critiqued and often shown video of their procedures afterwards. This will allow them to see their mistakes and strengths and learn the best techniques.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement estimates that nearly 15 million incidents of medical harm occur across the nation every year. That equals a rate of 40,000 of these occurrences every day. Arkansas Children’s Hospital hopes to eliminate as many of these incidents as possible by giving medical personnel chances to practice and learn.

“The potential impact that the PULSE Center could have on the quality of pediatric care delivered in the state is limitless,” said Beth Petlak, ACH vice president of Business Development. “The PULSE Center provides hands-on experience via simulation so that they can learn, refine and perfect their skills before seeing patients.”

Healthcare is one of the few industries in which new clinicians are expected to perform procedures without extensive experience, Petlak noted. The PULSE Center will allow them to practice these clinical skills in a simulated clinic or environment just as simulation is used in the airline industry to teach and maintain a pilot’s skills in the cockpit.

The center already has acquired two high-fidelity simulation Manikins — one that is an infant and one that is an adolescent. Computers drive the reactions of these Manikins.

For example, a medical student might practice intubating a baby using the Manikin, and in a control room behind the operating table, the simulation specialist will manipulate the situation on the computer. The simulation specialist could change the Manikin’s breathing patterns by typing a few keys on a computer, and the air compressor inside the Manikin would alter its “breathing”. These life-like Manikins also have appendages that can be moved, eyes with pupils that can be changed to simulate dilation and tubes that imitate blood flow. They can even be manipulated to react to the administration of certain medications and gasses.

“You want to make these situations as realistic as possible,” said Travis Hill, PULSE Center simulation specialist. “We want to reach the point where there is a suspension of disbelief, and the student or trainee is as reactive as possible when they are placed in these scenarios.”

In addition, the lay people who act as patients — known as “standardized patients” — will train at the PULSE Center to portray cases. This could include a wide range of roles, from an asthmatic patient to the overwhelmed parent of a trauma victim.

“In many scenarios we will use the technology in combination with the standardized patients,” Hill said. “This will give the entire team the chance to interact and deal with all the issues that arise in emergency situations.”

The PULSE Center is located on the ACH campus, directly across from the main hospital building along Marshall Street in Little Rock. The center will offer an unparalleled advantage to those who come through it, Cantrell said, because it will put trainees the closest they’ll come to a live patient situation.

“There’s an old saying, ‘You hear it, and you’ll forget it. You’ll see it, and you’ll remember it. But if you do it, you’ll understand it,’” she said. “Our hope is that by allowing people to actually do these procedures, we’ll increase their comprehension and reduce the chance that they’ll make errors.”

For more information, visit http://www.thepulsecenter.org/ or on mobile Web at http://mobile.thepulsecenter.org/ .

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Arkansas Children’s Hospital

CONTACT: Hilary DeMillo of Arkansas Children’s Hospital,+1-501-364-6445, or demillohh@archildrens.org

Web site: http://www.archildrens.org/http://www.thepulsecenter.org/http://mobile.thepulsecenter.org/