State-of-the-art mannequins offer unique training for Mercy labor and delivery staff

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - Mercy Springfield admitted a new patient for training purposes in labor and delivery.

The new addition of state-of-the-art pregnant mannequins offers unique training for nurses and doctors across the Mercy System.

“Just one life, making a difference in that one life is worth every dollar spent, every time spent with all the staff,” says Kristin Dawson, a clinical educator with Mercy Springfield.

Just like medicine has changed over the years in terms of treatments and procedures, so have the training methods.

“(We will) incorporate this towards the end of their classroom time, and we will put them through every high-risk complication we can come up with,” says Heather Ulm, the Labor and Delivery Clinical Nurse Educator with Mercy Springfield.

A few years ago, during labor and delivery rotations in a hospital, nurses and medical students would start with a pencil and paper and lectures to learn. Times are changing.

“When I started my nursing career, I used pen and paper. There was no computerized charting. The mannequins we had were only torsos, and those were from CPR skills,” says Dawson.

Meet Victoria. She is a mannequin, but she resembles something from a 1980s movie more than what we see in a department store.

“Thankfully, we were sponsored by the Mercy Health Foundation, which was able to financially support this purchase. We are able to train our staff in the most realistic way possible both here in Springfield and at critical access hospitals,” says Ahsley Pugh, the Director of Professional Practice for Mercy Springfield.

The newest tool simulates different scenarios that hospital staff may experience in the delivery room.

“For example, a hemorrhage, there is a belly that she has that actually bleeds. And that is that shock factor of, “Oh, I have to figure out how to make this stop and treat this,” says Ulm.

From a normal, noncomplicated delivery to a breach and C-section, the simulation can give the staff a wide range of experiences they can train on before stepping into real-world situations.

“I think in the health care setting, you can’t be too advanced. Because we can’t practice on real patients, we can’t have a C-section on somebody who doesn’t need one. And in those moments when we are performing a C-section, it needs to be those experts at the table and not letting somebody practice,” says Pugh.

While nothing can replace a real person and birth, Victoria and her two baby mannequins, Tori and Chrissy, are the next best.

“We can plan an entire scenario, and if the learners do not quit grasping the idea and it goes off the rails, we will just respond accordingly, and she will respond to whatever the learners are doing,” says Ulm.

Mercy can also take Victoria to their outlying hospitals and give emergency room staff hands-on experience in deliveries.

“Some of the facilities we go to don’t actually have a labor and delivery area or an OB area, but they get those patients that come in at the door and are now delivering a baby,” says Dawson.

Victoria has been at Mercy Springfield for about a month and has been getting requests for her to visit the other hospitals in the system.

“There are a lot of physicians who only work in the rural areas, who aren’t up here at the main hospital and haven’t taken care of these situations. That gives them the opportunity to go through these scenarios also and to bring their skills back, so if these patients do arrive, they are more comfortable taking care of them,” says Dawson.

And the goal is to improve care across the Mercy System.

“How can we impact more units, and with this type of a mannequin, it makes it so much more impactful,” says Ulm.

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