Case Study: Human Patient Simulation Boosts Competence and Confidence for Clinicians at WakeMed Health & Hospitals

It's Thursday morning in early May in the Emergency Department at WakeMed Raleigh Campus, An experienced pediatric trauma physician is trying to help a young boy who appears to be experiencing serious respiratory distress and is not responding to medication. Looking on anxiously, the frantic mother is bombarding the doctor with questions, when all of a sudden, the boy's father bursts through the door, demanding to know what's happening to his son and challengng the physician's competence. The commotion is interrupting the physician, adding to the difficulty of identifying the patient's problem. Unfortunately, the young boy arrests and dies in spite of a valiant effort by the trauma team to save him.

Fortunately, the boy is only a human patient simulation mannequin, designed and built to present the physiology of a six-year-old child, and the mother and father are actors hired to add to the realism and stress of the simulation scenario being conducted by a multidisciplinary team in WakeMed's Center for Innovative Learning.

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