By ROBIN SHANNON

L’Observateur

LUTCHER – With the help of some sophisticated robotic simulated patients, doctors, nurses and other staff at St. James Parish Hospital addressed a series of training needs as part of an eight-month study conducted by the LSU Health Sciences Center.

The Lutcher hospital was one of four hospitals in the state and the only rural critical access hospital to participate in the program, which targeted human patient simulation training with medical teams in their own healthcare setting.

“It was a chance for us to get ‘almost live’ training for our staff,” said St. James Parish Hospital CEO Mary Ellen Pratt. “Everyone knew the patients were essentially mannequins, but to see the real reactions on the faces of our staff trying to treat or resuscitate the simulated patients was incredible. Everyone really learned a lot.”

Pratt said the study allowed staff at the hospital to become exposed to procedures that the hospital doesn’t normally see so they can be ready to go when it counts.

“We specifically selected young children and labor and delivery scenarios because we don’t see a lot of that,” Pratt said. “The few times we do deal with a delivery is when the delivery is unexpected, or the patient cannot make it to a larger maternity ward. In those cases, it is common for something to not be right. It is things we need to know when the time comes.”

The high-fidelity simulators used during the project presented realistic patient situations that prompted response from hospital teams. The simulators had the characteristics of real patients in that they could breathe, carried a pulse, simulated different types of heart rhythms, blinked, spoke, and even gave birth in certain situations.

Other simulators with lower fidelity were used to practice specific procedures and use new technologies. During training, the simulators were hooked up to actual hospital monitors and demonstrated realistic reactions to medications and other treatments administered during the training that allows staff to practice and improve skills in a nonlife-threatening situation.

“Although it wasn’t ‘real life,’ some of our nurses and doctors were a bit nervous to start because they knew they were being watched,” Pratt said. “The program served as a way for us to understand weaknesses and enhance our skills as a team. In some scenarios, it came down to the littlest things like where certain supplies were kept. Those kinds of things take seconds off response time.”

Pratt said the hospital had been in talks with Tulane University Medical Center to go down to their simulation center to do training when the hospital got the call from LSU. She said the research team at LSU was “impressed with the strong commitment of the hospital leadership and staff to ongoing training and improvements in teamwork, quality care and patient safety.”

“The hospital is big on team training,” Pratt said. “We are all responsible for one another, and we all hang on each other for support.”