A SIMple patient

Simulation patient helps educate health-care workers.

The man lay slack-jawed on a gurney. He wore only blue boxers; visible above them was a red scar on his chest indicating recent heart surgery. His eyes were closed. His chest moved rhythmically up and down. Intravenous fluids coursed through his veins.

On closer look, one could see his bare toes were dark, indicating the circulation problems of a diabetic. He had a pressure ulcer on his ankle right above the black toes, and farther up on his thigh was a large, angry-looking bedsore.

This guy was in bad shape. So what was he doing at a luncheon for the Southeast Missouri Hospital Auxiliary?

Actually, he was the guest of honor. The man on the gurney is known as Sim Man. The auxiliary raised about half of the $44,900 that bought him, so its membership was first to meet him.

Sim Man (short for Simulation) is a teaching tool that will spend half its time at the hospital and the other half at Southeast's College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

Dr. Gwen Thoma, director of educational services at Southeast, first saw a similar mannequin at a seminar in Atlanta and immediately realized what an asset it would be at Southeast for nurse training.

"Everything you can do with a human you can do on him before you actually go bedside," Thoma said.

Thoma asked the auxiliary members if they would raise the money to buy one.

The auxiliary sponsored the Designer ShowHouse of Ideas last fall. Using the former home of Gary and Wendy Rust, which now belongs to the Southeast Missouri State University Foundation, area decorators and students from the university's interior design classes were invited to decorate a room in the house. The auxiliary sold tickets to see first the house as it was originally, then a few weeks later the results from all the decorators. The show house raised enough money to allow the auxiliary to give $20,000 toward the purchase of Sim Man. The Southeast Hospital Foundation gave the rest.

"The Designer ShowHouse of Ideas was a great success for all the entities involved, be that the interior design students or the patients who benefit from nursing care at Southeast Missouri Hospital -- and the other hospitals that eventually employ graduates of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences," said Kathy King, president of the hospital auxiliary.

Instructor Pat Williamson went to Texas for two days to learn how to use the computer program and equipment that make Sim Man breathe, cough and moan. Like a real person he has a pulse in his neck, wrist and groin. Sim Man also registers blood pressure. Students can give him IVs; Sim Man is so realistic that some of the IVs will splash back from his veins the way it can happen with a living patient. Students can also insert a tube down his throat and attach him to a respirator.

"He can have a heart attack, asthma -- anything you can imagine, we can make him do," Williamson said.

He can even complain. Sim Man is programmed to say things like "I don't feel well," "Doc, I feel like I could die." "I can't breathe; my chest hurts." "I am quite nauseous." He even gets cranky: "Go away!"

The program also gives Sim Man the symptoms that make him so uncomfortable. The instructor controls the symptoms with the computer program. It is then up to the student to figure out what's wrong with him and make him feel better.

The instructor has the ability to make the situation even more life-like.

"He can be programmed to react abnormally," Williamson said. "The instructor has the power to make him die."

The instructor has other powers over Sim Man. Laerdal, the company that makes Sim Man, also makes spare parts.

"We can make him a woman," Williamson said. "He has female parts."

Dr. Karen Hendrickson, vice president and chief nursing officer at Southeast, publicly thanked the auxiliary for its fund-raising efforts.

"We don't need another man in our lives," she quipped, "but we're thrilled to get this one."

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160