The Dummies Don’t Die Anymore

Apparently they used to. The school purchased some great high-tech dummies a while back. They breathe, the chest goes up and down, there’s a heart beat, blood pressure, they talk (kind of), and they die if allowed.

The dummies can be programed to go through an acute cycle (drop in blood pressure, high pain, tachycardia, vomiting, tachypnea, kussmaul’s, whatever you want really). We worked in a team treating the symptoms. No docs (they were busy).

We were first year. Seriously, the dummies never had a chance.

Patient’s resp. rate at 20, bp at 148/74, pulse 110 and vomiting profusely. “So …how do you figure out the ccs of dimenhydinate to mix into the 50 ml bag of normal saline again?”

Anyway, I loved this part of the course.  And by the end we started to get it right..mostly.

But our patients never died. They stopped the scenario before the crash. The story goes that students in earlier programs got pretty upset when they dummies went vital signs absent. I understand. We didn’t have the skills to save the poor plastic people. Most of us were just giving our first IM injections in clinical. Geez people.

So the dummies get to live. Thank God….I didn’t want that on my conscience – even if they’re just plastic.