MONROE - At first he didn't move much, then his barrel of a chest rose and his eyelids snapped open and shut mechanically. He can't move and he is stuck wherever he is set, wirelessly attached to monitors that track his pulse and breathing.
He is iStan, and he is a mannequin used at Monroe Clinic Hospital for staff training and by nursing students from Blackhawk Technical College for practice.
IStan and his smaller, child accompaniment PediaSIM, are advanced medical mannequins with the ability to exhibit hundreds of symptoms so students or staff can perform any number of procedures on them.
The mannequin's lifelike qualities are remarkable.
"He has some ports on top of his head where he can sweat out of, and he can tear up, too," said Sharon Schmidt, a clinical educator at the clinic. She and fellow clinical educator Megan Wolf helped get the mannequin program off the ground in October.
IStan and PediaSIM lay on two beds in a wide room in the basement of the St. Clare Center. The room, called the Sim Lab, can accommodate a group of people, and Schmidt said at times they may have as many as 10 students working on or around the mannequins.
In the Sim Lab, behind a half-wall with glass panes, are the real hearts of iStan and PediaSIM: laptop computers that control everything the mannequins do. There are cameras above each mannequin, and one on the half-wall that can record while students or staff work with the mannequins. The recordings can then be played back later in a room next door or a live-feed can be shown using a projector.
Schmidt picked up a microphone that wirelessly sends her voice through iStan, and coughed.
"I have this horrible cough, how do my lungs sound?" Schmidt asked with a raspy growl.
"We also get to train them with drama lessons," Patricia Lawson, the clinic's director of marketing, joked.
The mannequins were purchased by BTC and are used as a more hands-on approach to practice rather than the typical stoic medical mannequins. The two mannequins were purchased from CAE Healthcare in Canada after BTC and the clinic agreed in June to collaborate.
BTC spokesperson Gary Kohn said the college invested about $140,000 for outfitting the clinic for the mannequins - buying the mannequins and purchasing a service contract for the mannequins for maintenance and breakdowns.
"They are not your common mannequin that you just put a dress on," Kohn said.
Wolf said the mannequins offer a unique training opportunity that could end up drawing new hires.
"It helps us with primary recruiting, since we have this technology that sets us apart from even the bigger hospitals," Wolf said.
The mannequins are used to orient new staff and teach them procedures used at the clinic, making training a zero-risk task.
"Instead of having the teacher say, "Oh, now his blood pressure is rising,' we can have the sim do that in real-time," Schmidt said.
IStan's skin is malleable, but not like resistive, real skin - it's colored similarly, but it has a distinctive rubber feel to it. His pulse is steady and thumps like an engine, and can be felt by touching him. He doesn't make much noise unless prompted to, but when he does it's a little discomfiting - his pupils can retract or expand and he can give out a very realistic scream.
"We had a bit of fun with one of the maintenance workers," Wolf said. He "would not go in there, but we told him we needed him to hang a clock or something, and while he was doing that, we got over the speaker and said, "Faster, you're not doing it right.'"
Wolf said they have also invited EMS and fire crews to practice on the mannequins.
The mannequins can be moved - iStan weighs about 130 pounds - to other areas of the clinic to simulate different circumstances such as in the ICU.
The mannequins are unique to Green County, but there are similar Sim Labs in Madison and Janesville, Wolf said.
"There's only so much you can learn from a textbook," Schmidt said. "We can recreate trauma scenarios and what that would look like."
He is iStan, and he is a mannequin used at Monroe Clinic Hospital for staff training and by nursing students from Blackhawk Technical College for practice.
IStan and his smaller, child accompaniment PediaSIM, are advanced medical mannequins with the ability to exhibit hundreds of symptoms so students or staff can perform any number of procedures on them.
The mannequin's lifelike qualities are remarkable.
"He has some ports on top of his head where he can sweat out of, and he can tear up, too," said Sharon Schmidt, a clinical educator at the clinic. She and fellow clinical educator Megan Wolf helped get the mannequin program off the ground in October.
IStan and PediaSIM lay on two beds in a wide room in the basement of the St. Clare Center. The room, called the Sim Lab, can accommodate a group of people, and Schmidt said at times they may have as many as 10 students working on or around the mannequins.
In the Sim Lab, behind a half-wall with glass panes, are the real hearts of iStan and PediaSIM: laptop computers that control everything the mannequins do. There are cameras above each mannequin, and one on the half-wall that can record while students or staff work with the mannequins. The recordings can then be played back later in a room next door or a live-feed can be shown using a projector.
Schmidt picked up a microphone that wirelessly sends her voice through iStan, and coughed.
"I have this horrible cough, how do my lungs sound?" Schmidt asked with a raspy growl.
"We also get to train them with drama lessons," Patricia Lawson, the clinic's director of marketing, joked.
The mannequins were purchased by BTC and are used as a more hands-on approach to practice rather than the typical stoic medical mannequins. The two mannequins were purchased from CAE Healthcare in Canada after BTC and the clinic agreed in June to collaborate.
BTC spokesperson Gary Kohn said the college invested about $140,000 for outfitting the clinic for the mannequins - buying the mannequins and purchasing a service contract for the mannequins for maintenance and breakdowns.
"They are not your common mannequin that you just put a dress on," Kohn said.
Wolf said the mannequins offer a unique training opportunity that could end up drawing new hires.
"It helps us with primary recruiting, since we have this technology that sets us apart from even the bigger hospitals," Wolf said.
The mannequins are used to orient new staff and teach them procedures used at the clinic, making training a zero-risk task.
"Instead of having the teacher say, "Oh, now his blood pressure is rising,' we can have the sim do that in real-time," Schmidt said.
IStan's skin is malleable, but not like resistive, real skin - it's colored similarly, but it has a distinctive rubber feel to it. His pulse is steady and thumps like an engine, and can be felt by touching him. He doesn't make much noise unless prompted to, but when he does it's a little discomfiting - his pupils can retract or expand and he can give out a very realistic scream.
"We had a bit of fun with one of the maintenance workers," Wolf said. He "would not go in there, but we told him we needed him to hang a clock or something, and while he was doing that, we got over the speaker and said, "Faster, you're not doing it right.'"
Wolf said they have also invited EMS and fire crews to practice on the mannequins.
The mannequins can be moved - iStan weighs about 130 pounds - to other areas of the clinic to simulate different circumstances such as in the ICU.
The mannequins are unique to Green County, but there are similar Sim Labs in Madison and Janesville, Wolf said.
"There's only so much you can learn from a textbook," Schmidt said. "We can recreate trauma scenarios and what that would look like."