Donations to the Stars Appeal, Salisbury District Hospital’s charity, are funding a cutting edge simulation training programme at Salisbury Hospital enabling staff to provide thevery best care to thousands of local people in hospital each week.
Stars Appeal funding of £78,000 has provided a second lifelike ‘Sim-Man’ manikin and an artificial lung. The charity is also funding the salary of a simulation technician who works alongside the hospital’s Clinical Nurse Lead for Simulation to deliver the specialist training and manage the high tech equipment.
Simulation-based education provides doctors, nurses and other health care professionals with a realistic form of training to learn together while caring for simulated patients. Some of the training takes place in the hospital’s education centre where the equipment is housed in a dedicated simulation suite.
Alternatively, sessions can be within the actual wards and departments, where the doctors and nurses work day-to-day, to create an even more lifelike simulation. The training includes practising emergency situations, logistics of transferring patients, systems testing and facing uncommon medical events.
During COVID-19 the simulation team provided extensive training for the hospital’s clinical staff, including those who have had to be redeployed to work in different areas of the Hospital.
The sophisticated simulation equipment funded by the charity can replicate a wide range of medical conditions patients’ experience, including life-threat-
ening and complex situations such as strokes, heart attacks and sepsis. The manikins can breathe, speak, have audible heart and lung sounds, a measurable blood pressure pulse rate and respond to drugs and CPR. If treatment is not performed correctly, the manikin’s condition deteriorates. The artificial lung enables the ‘Sim Man’ manikins to be cared for on a ventilator and replicate realistic scenarios. This adds realism to the simulations in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit and provides valuable training opportunities to staff while maintaining skills that may be required to work there again.
Claire Levi, Clinical Lead for Simulation, said: “We thank Stars Appeal supporters for enabling us to enhance our simulation service. The manikin and artificial lung are excellent additions to our service and are providing extensive opportunities for hospital staff to practice caring for simulated patients to prepare them fully for whatever they may face and to enable them to provide outstanding care to patients. During the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this training has undoubtedly helped save lives.”
Graham Branagan, Consultant Surgeon and Lead Clinical Ambassador for the Stars Appeal said: “We are proud that the charity is investing in this service that makes such a difference to my colleagues and I when responding to complex and often life-threatening situations. It enables us to be fully prepared for whatever we may face and to provide the very best care. This is only possible thanks to the visionary support of Stars Appeal donors, fundraisers, and those who so kindly remember us in their Wills and to whom we are all hugely grateful.”