LifeFlight Human Patient Simulator Visits PVH
 Maine’s first and only mobile trauma training program is on the road for a second year of critical outreach education. Housed in a large RV, the Human Patient Simulator (HPS) allows The LifeFlight Foundation to bring training to hospital personnel and local emergency medical services crews who might not otherwise receive frequent professional development. In October, the program visited Penobscot Valley Hospital in Lincoln and provided training for the facilities emergency responders.
Critical care medicine relies on a “chain of survival,” with the weakest link often determining the final outcome, no matter how expert the specialist providers. Access to care, first responder capability, travel time, initial hospital care and secondary transfer are all essential links in this chain. Because patients in rural Maine communities are farther from specialized care, it is especially important for first responders and primary care providers to be competent and experienced in critical care. The paradox is that these same providers often encounter significant challenges to find regular, affordable continuing medical education.
The LifeFlight Foundation’s Human Patient Simulator program offers a unique opportunity for rural and urban healthcare facilities to enhance their team skills in critical care crisis management. The program is built around a state-of-the-art, high-fidelity mannequin trainer used in medical school for anesthesia residents. Each year, the mobile simulator visits every hospital in the state. Each will have the HPS based at their facility for one week, with 90-minute scenarios running four times a day, training more than 45 providers at each hospital.
Scenarios are a combination of pre-developed and customized patient encounters based on particular hospital or EMS patient experiences. The HPS allows a provider who might only encounter a critically ill or injured patient (especially pediatric) once or twice a year to encounter a similar “patient” multiple times with focused feedback in a managed stress environment. The simulator is able to replicate a wide variety of very realistic patient illnesses and injuries. These true-to-life scenarios provide nurses, EMTs and even doctors with a dynamic “patient” to improve or deteriorate based on their care. The simulator is so sophisticated and versatile that it blinks, speaks, breathes, and even has a heartbeat and a pulse. It also accurately mirrors human responses to CPR, medication, intubation, ventilation and catheterization.
“This program offers a unique opportunity to our staff,” says PVH Spokeswoman Allison Bankston. “The training is extremely advanced, and very realistic. You have lab values, x-rays, meds, patient interaction and even body fluids just like in a real scenario.”
The simulator is staffed by LifeFlight nurses, paramedics and, as available, physicians. To date, the program has been approved for RN and EMS CME credits, as well as Physician Category 1.
The HPS program was developed and implemented by The LifeFlight Foundation, the charitable development organization supporting LifeFlight of Maine, in partnership with Maine Emergency Medical Services, the Department of Public Safety, and the Maine Health Access Foundation.
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