SimMan

Today was our SimMan practicum.  Admittedly, I was nervous and did not know what to expect.  The professors were vague at best.  Also, this was my first experience with a SimMan.  We did work with mannequins in nursing school but never an 'intelligent' SimMan.

They divided us into groups of 4 but one of our group members couldn't make it because of car trouble.  The room was large and along the wall was Mr. Hottie himself- Sim.  He was connected to a speaker in the room next to ours.  Another professor was speaking for him, in other words, playing the role of the patient and observing us through a one way piece of glass.  Two adjunct clinical faculty members were grading us in the room and our professor was assisting us with obtaining the lab results, EKG results, etc when we asked for them.

The setting was in an ED and we were his NP's.  We were given info about him ie: age, presenting complaint, past medical/past surgical history.  Then, it was our turn to elicit the history of present illness, conduct a review of systems, a physical exam, order labs, drugs, oxygen, etc.  We interpreted the labs and proceeded accordingly.  In the end, our case scenario was a pt with a NSTEMI (non-ST segment elevation myocardial infarction).

It was pretty straight forward and we received high marks as a group.  Although, I was trying to complicate things by also ruling out a pneumonia.  I thought that our professors would give us 2 issues that we had to address-- but it ended up being simpler than that.  In the end, I was glad that I explored the possible pneumonia/resp infection because SimMan did have a temp, coarse breath sounds and a high WBC count so it did fit the clinical picture but the chest x-ray was normal.

Overall, I did like the SimMan practicum.  I thought that it was helpful in understanding my own strengths/weaknesses.


Have you ever used a SimMan?  Did you find the experience helpful or a waste of time?


Image by John McLellan