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[Music]
[Siren]
[voice in background] Trauma alert. ER Room 1
[Narrator] It looks like real life. An injured mother and baby. A busy hospital trauma unit.
But this emergency is really a training exercise in UIC's Clinical Performance Center.
The center is pioneering the use of high-tech mannequins, or sims, in real-world medical situations.
The newest member of the sim family is Jessie, a 10-month-old baby sim.
Jessie is controlled by computer.
She coos, cries and moves her chest as she breathes.
You can take her blood pressure and other vital signs at bedside.
When she is in respiratory distress, her lips turn blue.
[Cindy LeDonne] It's a learning experience that you can't get other ways without putting
real life patients in the situation and
we certainly don't want to be practicing on real patients.
The practice should be on the mannequins, on the task trainers, with the standardized patients,
so that they're prepared for situations when they go into a room with a real live patient.
[Narrator] The center trains health professionals at all levels
nursing, pharmacy and medical students,
residents and faculty physicians.
The center can create complex scenarios and experiences that use not only the sims
but standardized patients, professional paramedics and center staff.
Here, third-year nursing students prepare for their first experience on their own.
[Gia Franklin] I've learned so much in just the 10-minute scenario that I had,
that I could take all these tools with me and apply it into the clinical experience.
After the first scenario, it was quite discouraging because it was like,
wow, I made so many mistakes, my mistakes outweighed the good things I did.
But I feel that since you have the scenario, you have the debriefing,
and you talk about what you did wrong and how you could, um, fix it.
And then you have a second chance to go back.
[Chelsea Krause] I think there's an understanding that when you are a student you're really
just, kind of a baby nurse in a way.
There's really so much to learn in the profession, and a lot of our time is spent buried in textbooks
until like 3 in the morning.
So then when you get into these situations it's good to realize that
book smarts are important but that's not really what's the most important in nursing.
The most important I think is to be able to think on your feet,
to think critically, and to act quick.
[Narrator] This is Jeanne Galatzer-Levy reporting for UIC News
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