Seminole State College
nursing students rely on one of two simulators to gain knowledge about delivering babies.
The trio of students were about to help a mother give birth, even though they haven’t technically graduated from nursing school yet.
Adding to the pressure, they would work in front of a crowd, too.
On Wednesday, a simulation exercise unfolded at Seminole State College as nursing students and staff showcased the school’s newest technology for their class.
Last year, the school purchased two female simulators, worth $122,600, that can mockdeliver babies and give students a sense of what it’s like to be working in the OB-GYN ward. The technology also is used to train students who want to be EMT first-responders.
In health care, more educators are leaning toward simulators for real-life training that comes without the risks of working on real people.
Last month, a clinical simulation center opened at the Orlando Veterans Affairs Medical Center that features a fake patient who responds to anesthesia as well as an ambulance bay and two operating rooms.
At the Altamonte Springs campus, the Seminole students gathered in their blue and white scrubs, stethoscopes draped around their necks.
Danielle Morton gave her classmates a pep talk in the hallway, before the simulation began with more than a dozen Seminole educators and news media members in the audience.
They felt the nerves of performing in front of an audience, some students later admitted.
“Just go slow,” said Morton, a 28-year-old nursing student from Orlando, to her three classmates who were called up to take their turn with the simulators Wednesday morning. “Take your time. You guys got it.”
Then, the class stepped into the room where a dummy with a pregnant belly and unblinking eyes lay on a hospital bed.
With the technology, the students can observe a delivery, monitor the baby’s heartbeats and care for a mother postpartum.
By controlling the pace with a computer, the college staff can simulate a perfectly healthy birth or make something go terribly wrong, like hemorrhaging, where the mother and baby’s lives are at stake.
Michaela Wells, a 22-year-old Altamonte Springs native, added to the chaos of the delivery room. She played the voice of the mother for the simulator, who doesn’t speak.
“We’re doing this!” cried Wells, where she whimpered and asked the occasional question, pretending to be a mother going into early labor. “This is happening!”
Other actors appeared on scene. There was the pretend husband, excited and nervous to see his first child being born after being deployed, and two fake doctors who showed up in scrubs and tennis shoes.
The nursing students also must practice their bedside manners as they check the dum-
my’s vital signs.
“We’re the nurses taking care of you today,” student Oritza Haedo, 39, of Winter Springs, told Wells.
Meanwhile, the Seminole instructors watched to see how the students communicate with each other and how they cared for the soon-to-be “mom.”
“We take this very seriously,” said Bob Schlussler, a medical simulator specialist for the college and also a licensed paramedic. “This is a place to learn and make mistakes. … If we kill the patient, I push the button, and the patient goes back to life.”
Afterward, the students and their instructors can break down the scenarios and analyze them.
On the floor, red tape in the shape of a square signals a safe place, where the students also get a timeout from the simulator to talk each other.
“It did actually feel real,” said student Katelyn Kennedy, 21, of Apopka, after the exercise was over for the day. “I was just so zoned in on taking care of the patient.”