The Lung Solution is a Winner at St. Elizabeth Healthcare
We recently spoke with Bill Garrison, BS, ACCS-RRT, RCP, Respiratory Educator – Simulation Lab at St. Elizabeth Healthcare. St. Elizabeth Healthcare is one of the oldest, largest, and most respected medical providers in the Greater Cincinnati region. Founded as one small hospital in 1861, St. Elizabeth Healthcare now operates five facilities throughout Northern Kentucky.
History and Experimentation
Previously, a 5-bed clinical unit within the hospital served as the “simulation center.” Bill was asked to make the respiratory training interdisciplinary. But the missing element to their program was ventilator/BiPAP management training. There was no way to simulate this and no way to change settings on manikins. So at that time, several years ago, Bill used the IngMar Adult/Pediatric Demonstration Lung, to mimic real ventilation.
Simulation Center Built
Two years ago, St. Elizabeth decided to build an improved simulation center, with a budget to upgrade the respiratory simulation equipment. Most recently, in January 2018, the hospital acquired the IngMar ASL 5000™ Lung Solution for SimMan®, which allowed them to run simulations from a control room for BiPAP or ventilator management.
Hands-On Teaching
According to Bill, the most unique features of the ASL 5000 Lung Solution are its realism and capacity to manage real-time ventilation, as well as the ability to conduct various hands-on scenarios.
“I don’t think there’s another product on the market currently that provides such a realistic ventilation management experience. Understanding the resistance and compliance settings for different disease states is critical. It has opened up a whole different level of education for our staff.”
Bill now routinely transports the ASL 5000 Lung Solution to different departments on campus that are not able to dedicate time in the simulation center. In fact, he’s even received outside requests from other hospitals, but just can’t accommodate them due to staffing issues. Instead, he has drawn on his experience with the ASL 5000 Lung Solution to consult with other organizations on how to upgrade their programs and has referred some of these other organizations to IngMar Medical.
Positive Outcomes, Continuing Development
The ASL 5000 Lung Solution has greatly enhanced the program for learners and educators at St. Elizabeth because of the high degree of realism, without involving actual patients. Since the simulation center provides a training environment outside of the actual clinical floor, the overall program is safer and improves the learning of respiratory mechanics for the medical staff. Bill is excited about future ASL 5000 Lung Solution developments, especially the ability to pre-program your own scenarios. He sees the partnership between IngMar and Laerdal as a very beneficial collaboration for the simulation community.
“This collaboration between Laerdal and IngMar has been a win for the simulation community. No other single product can do what these two can do combined.”
He says this is due to its greater realism, which provides learners with a clearer understanding of respiratory mechanics, since it is hands-on and more sophisticated than previous systems.
“(The Lung Solution is a) win-win for everyone, and changes the whole education model. It opens up an entirely new avenue for any of the hospital staff to take advantage of this training opportunity.”