MCC nursing students practice on SimMan

Practical nursing students at McHenry County College can now learn routine and emergency patient care in a life-like setting thanks to their new "patient," an advanced patient simulator called SimMan.

SimMan has realistic weight and anatomy, and responds physiologically like a real patient. It can cough, breathe and speak. It has heart, lung and bowel sounds and can even die.

According to Joan Flanagan, dean of Health Career Programs and Nursing Administrator, this state-of-the-art teaching tool will significantly enhance MCC student nurses' experiences with multiple medical scenarios before they care for a real patient in a hospital or clinic. Students in Rock Valley College's practical nursing classes at MCC as well as MCC's soon-to-begin registered nursing program will use SimMan frequently for practice and testing.

SimMan is hooked up to a computer that allows the instructor to program hundreds of scenarios that are only limited by one's imagination, Flanagan said. After running through a scenario, the instructor and student can get a debriefing on the computer, look at what went wrong or right and assess if they could have changed what they did. They then have an opportunity to run thought the situation again.

In addition to patient care, students are challenged and tested on their decision-making ability through scenarios that may include reporting progress to a doctor who calls in or talking to a family member or another health care team member. The practice helps students build better assessment skills and students can learn from their mistakes in a safe, educational setting, Flanagan said.

The cost of SimMan was nearly $41,000. Funding for SimMan came from a combination of sources, including a Perkins grant and over half of the money coming from the Friends of MCC Foundation through a donor-directed gift received from the McHenry County Community Foundation.