Johannesburg - When you walk into the clinical simulation laboratory of the University of Johannesburg’s Faculty of Health Sciences, you would think you’re on a hospital wing, not a varsity campus.
The faculty has been running the first African integrated-emergency medical care simulation lab, simulating real-time medical emergencies, since its launch in 2014.
The simulation lab mimics an entire patient journey from the scene, to the ambulance, to the emergency department, intensive care, to a general ward and even a transfer to another medical facility, as part of training for nurses and emergency medical care students.
Traditionally, emergency medical care training relied on real patients in actual clinical settings, but now students training to be paramedics can practise on mannequins in the simulation lab.
The faculty’s dean, Professor André Swart, said: “In South Africa and worldwide, during training with clinician-patient interaction, the issue was that it was conducted on real patients.
“The critical issue now is to improve the clinical competence of the students before they see patients. We are mimicking the world of patient care as it would happen in a real hospital system. That also allows us to look at when a patient is handed over from a pre-hospital environment by each student,” Swart said.
In the simulation lab, students can now learn how to put up a drip, resuscitate patients and how to deal with heart conditions through the use of mannequins.
Some of the life-like mannequins can vomit, urinate or have seizures, and a few can even speak. The mannequins are also of different ages, from newborns to adults.
Swart said they try to make it as realistic as possible.
“We can go to the Noord Street taxi rank and record hooting and other background noises and say students have been called to a scene where a pedestrian has been hit by a car.
“We play the background music on the television screens to create an environment similar to an accident scene.”
By doing this, Swart said, they can test how students handle stressful situations and how they interact with the public.
The lab’s manager, Geoff Petro, said that while it was originally used just for paramedics, the lab was now open to other departments in the faculty. He said it was better equipped for paramedics and nursing students.
“Nursing students can come here and see how to deal with patients straight from the ambulance until they get to the ICU ward. When the students go out for their practical training in real hospitals, their confidence levels are high and they can treat patients better,” Petro said.
Swart said: “We can teach our students certain clinical competencies in a simulation environment where they can practise. They can learn through their mistakes, and once their confidence and skills reach the required level, we can let them see real patients.”
Swart said the facility was modelled on the casualty section at Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital in Soweto.
“Our casualty is exactly the same as you would see at Bara. We chose it because it is one of the biggest and most modern trauma facilities in the country,” he pointed out.
The faculty will from September start building a rescue simulation environment where students will be trained on how to deal with earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters.
“That will give us the best resources on campus and comparable to the best in the world,” Swart said.
The first phase of the construction is expected to take 18 months.
Swart said there was a high demand for the course, and the department of emergency care can register only 40 new students a year.
The department receives about 1 500 applications annually.
“We have this high-quality simulation centre with top-notch equipment which we link to the real-life aspects of people doing time on response vehicles and casualties at hospitals.
“It’s a combination of all the need to know of academia and the clinical environment linked to real-life situations,” Swart said.
The Star