Built for Life

Stan the Mannequin

For a “standard man,” this guy is pretty sophisticated. He’s also able to take on multiple personalities – iGranny, iSoldier and iTruck Driver, to name a few.

Red Deer College recently acquired two instructional mannequins that move, breathe, live and die realistically – an innovation in health training never before experienced at RDC.

Safe and controlled. “Simulation allows students to develop clinical skills and use them all at once,” says Liz Sinclair, Nursing Lab Coordinator – Simulation. “With iStan, we can provide students with experiences they might not get in a clinical setting.”

Those clinical experiences will be controlled and performed in a safe environment for students enrolled in health programs in the upcoming Centre for Health Education. As part of the Building Communities Through Learning (BCTL) expansion, the new facility will include a simulation suite, iStan’s future new home.

The two identical iStans are user-friendly, wireless and controlled with an Apple computer.

After receiving funds through HWAP (Health Workforce Action Plan), the iStans arrived last summer. They’ll be rolled out for use with senior BScN and second-year Practical Nurse students in the fall. In the meantime, faculty members have been exploring iStan’s capabilities: his life-like lung, heart and abdominal sounds, and his palpable pulses. He can be intubated, catheterized and students can start an IV. He cries tears, perspires, drools, and has voice capability.

The iStan comes with five modifiable profiles, and new ones can be created to meet the particular needs of students. What adds to iStan’s versatility is how the simulator will change with each scenario. For example, because a sixty-one-year-old trucker has a different physiology than a young healthy soldier or pregnant female, he’ll also respond differently to medications and interventions.

Students can practice various physical assessments. While learning new interventions, they can make errors and, more importantly, learn how to recover from them.

The mannequins won’t replace clinical training but will be used as an adjunct to other learning strategies.

Rural benefits. BCTL’s planned Centre for Health Education will help meet the critical demand for trained health care workers. RDC plans to use iStan in rural areas as a means to further nursing education in central Alberta.

“The College has used task trainers before, but this high-fidelity simulation is about providing a highly realistic experience where students can become immersed from start to finish with the care of a patient,” Sinclair adds. “That keeps it safe for patients and for students, who should feel more confident and better prepared after using iStan.”