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Live simulation

Teens get hands-on experience at scrubs camp

Photo by Jody Isaackson Autumn Dovre, 13, used a stethoscope to listen to a patient’s heartbeat. The mannequin she used to practice on is verbally interactive.

MARSHALL — The Avera Marshall Health Center hosted area teens at its Scrubs Camp Wednesday for hands-on medical experiences, which included delivering a baby.

The mannequins used for live simulation were provided by Ridgewater College in a traveling classroom housed in a semi trailer, which was parked in the hospital parking lot for the event.

Instructor Keith Pattison demonstrated to small groups of students how he could use an iPad to control the mannequins and their respective responses to made-up medical conditions.

On the first diagnostic table, a male mannequin replicated labored breathing and going into cardiac arrest. Students used stethoscopes and pressure points to monitor vital signs and also observed as Pattison applied fibrillation patches for an electrifying experience for the “patient.”

The patient was also equipped to communicate verbally with the students, provided he hadn’t “passed out” or “died.” In which case, the instructor would simply reboot the program, which is obviously impossible with human patients. Thus the reason for using mannequins, he said.

Table number two held a pregnant woman mannequin apparently in labor. She, too, was verbally communicative regarding each stage of labor she was “experiencing.”

Student volunteers donned surgical gloves and helped deliver a mannequin baby, complete with body fluids such as “blood.”

“He can bleed, he can pee, he can cry,” Pattison said at the first table. “I just have to fill him with fluids.”

The mannequins are sophisticated pieces of equipment and look life-like, as the students observed.

“One mannequin can cost as much as $10,000 to $50,000,” Pattison said, “depending on how much you want them to be able to do.”

At that point, he pulled out a detachable thigh that had been theoretically severed from the leg and foot. All the appendages were removable, including the pregnant woman’s uterus containing a life-like baby. The appendages could be cued to squirt “blood” as in a traumatic accident.

After the students had been welcomed by two members of the Avera Marshall medical staff who shared their education and respective fields, the students had been divided into smaller groups of approximately six to eight students to visit the stations.

In addition to the sim lab, students were allowed to crawl up inside a North Memorial Health Ambulance while driver Tom Venzke instructed them on the occupation of being in the emergency medical field working with ambulances.

Another group was in the classroom working with syringes and oranges to learn how to administer injections.

Yet another group was touring the Alzheimer’s ward at the affiliated nursing home and being treated to other simulations.

“They can put on goggles with Vaseline-greased lenses to simulate eyesight issues,” Avera Communications and PR Coordinator Stacy Neubeck said. “They put on gloves with popcorn in the fingertips to simulate loss of feeling (sensory deprivation) and so forth.”

Students, like twin sisters Acona Yang, 11, and Arianna Yang, 11, of Marshall were intrigued by the hands-on experiences of the camp.

“We like it,” they said. “We are learning how to take care of people.”

Some of the students even have parents who work for Avera Marshall or its long-term care facility, such as Olivia Wall, 11. Wall’s mother works in the long-term care facility.

“(Camp) looked like something fun to do,” Olivia Wall said.

Even students who are planning on going into different fields of occupation found the camp worth attending, such as Autumn Dovre, 13, whose planned course of education would take her into the animation field. Dovre was the first to volunteer to listen to the male mannequin’s heartbeat.

Administrative assistant Kim Abraham is the coordinator for the scrubs event. Abraham said many past scrub students have gone into the medical field.

“There were 10-12 names I recognized who are in the health care fields now,” Abraham said, “including my three children.”

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