{"id":6320,"date":"2009-09-25T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/?p=6320"},"modified":"2020-09-25T10:14:52","modified_gmt":"2020-09-25T14:14:52","slug":"new-simulators-give-ucf-nursing-students-life-like-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ucf.edu\/news\/new-simulators-give-ucf-nursing-students-life-like-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"New Simulators Give Nursing Students Life-Like Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Birthing Noelle,” the new high-tech mannequin at the University of Central Florida’s College of Nursing<\/a>, is giving birth to “Baby Hal,” a smaller computerized mannequin resembling a newborn.<\/p>\n

She cries out with each contraction. Her chest rises and falls while a screen displays her blood pressure and heart rate. Then her baby boy enters the world with his first cry.<\/p>\n

UCF is the first school or hospital in the region to feature the 2009 Birthing Noelle and Baby Hal, considered the best of their kind for interactive nurse training. The computerized mannequins have pulses, breathe, move, speak and cry, and are connected to the same heart, blood pressure and fetal monitoring devices used in hospitals. They have 12 pre-programmed scenarios that nurses often encounter in hospital labor and delivery suites.<\/p>\n

Using a computer tablet, UCF nursing<\/a> instructor Betsy Guimond can change the medical scenarios for both the mother and baby to keep nursing students on their toes as they respond to and care for their life-like patients. For example, Baby Hal can seize at the touch of the instructor’s computer wand.<\/p>\n

Instructors can add life-like accessories to enrich the learning experience. For example, simulated blood packets can be placed inside the mannequin to replicate a blood clot.<\/p>\n

Birthing Noelle and Baby Hal give nursing students the simulated experience<\/a> of a mother in labor and after giving birth, and her newborn’s first critical moments — all experiences that students may not get to see in their obstetrics clinical training.<\/p>\n

“When they learn about a specific medical condition in the classroom, we can simulate it on one of the mannequins,” Guimond said. “Then when they go into the clinical area, they do a better job of taking care of patients.”<\/p>\n

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