Students In The Medical Field Get New Training Experience

PORTLAND (NEWS CENTER) -- Medical training has come a long way from the days of using dummies to teach CPR. Now student doctors, nurses and emergency technicians are working with patient simulators that give the students the best chance to learn without having to practice on real patients.

The child is really a forty thousand dollar human patient simulator. A state of the art tool that can bleed, blink and change symptoms at the touch of a computer screen. Through use of simulators students are able to get real world experience and learn from mistakes without compromising patient safety. The $40,000 simulator can bleed, blink, and change symptoms at the touch of a computer screen.

Clay Graybeal, the associate Dean of the College of Health Professions, said, "You add in the variables of family, distractions, noise, being outdoors, all of that, suddenly what you thought you knew ends up being challenged."

When the simulation is done, students and faculty have a chance to discuss what happened, right and wrong. Casey Macvane, a 3rd year resident, remarked, "having the paramedics there, having to interact with them and having the father there, those weren't people that I knew so I felt like I had to interact with them as I would usually interact with paramedics and parents so that felt very real actually those interactions."

Students in healthcare programs at the University of New England have been using these simulators in the classroom along with students in Maine Medical Centers residency program. Tuesday, students from Southern Maine Community College's paramedic program were asked to participate.