In the renovated Education Center and Simulation Lab at St. Charles Parish Hospital, the new robots can blink, breathe and talk. They can also simulate cardiac arrest and respond to life-saving measures.
On Aug. 26, the hospital celebrated the grand opening of the lab, which will provide real-life training to 400 Ochsner nurses a year, in addition to hospital staff and emergency responders.
Jarrett Fuselier, the chief nursing officer at the hospital, said that after Hurricane Ida damaged the hospital’s conference room, hospital administrators wanted to build a more modern center to educate staff and host meetings.
“I’ve been part of simulation trainings in a prior job, and I just really saw the benefit of that,” Fuselier said.
The renovation was funded in part through insurance claims and FEMA grants.
The lab has two mannequins, or programmable robots, that can simulate health emergencies or other health issues. On robot Annie, staff can start IVs, listen to her lung sounds and insert other lines and tubes. On the other robot, hospital staff and EMTs, can practice higher level skills like intubation. The robots can simulate various cardiac rhythms, septic shock and strokes, and the staff can practice chest compressions on the robots.
“We can simulate all of those activities and have that real world environment,” Fuselier said. “And it’s in an environment where you can’t hurt anyone.”
The lab includes a viewing room where an instructor can sit and monitor the health team as it trains with the mannequins.
“The cool thing, too, is that while you have the staff that’s working on the patient, you can have your other team essentially watching from another room so they can learn from what’s going on there and switch roles,” Fuselier said. “They really get the opportunity to sort of grade each other, but, more importantly, learn from each other.”
The new robots are more realistic than older versions, Fuselier said. They also allow for real time adjustments, which show how the staff members’ decisions would impact a patient.
“Having the ability to record these things through the system and show replays and things is also something that we did not have before,” Fuselier said.
Before the opening of the lab, St. Charles Parish Hospital staff would train at simulation centers in other Ochsner facilities. Now, those staff members can train more frequently with the simulation lab in the parish.
Parish fire departments and local industry partners will also use the lab for training.
Fuselier said one of the key benefits of the lab is that hospital staff can practice high risk procedures more frequently. The hospital sees only about 15,000 patients a year, or 42 patients a day.
“As a smaller facility we don’t see everything all the time,” he said. “Those infrequent procedures that are high risk are the ones you really worry about. And this is what we’re able to do in the lab. We want to provide a very high level of care when we have emergencies that don’t happen frequently.”
