(Radio Iowa) – Des Moines University’s state-of-the-art health simulation center recently became one of only eight centers worldwide to be accredited for its human simulation. Center director Kimberly Patterson says there are real people pretending to have an illness — which Seinfeld fans may remember was included in an episode with Kramer acting out illnesses. “In reality, our cases aren’t quite so dramatized as that,” she says. Patterson says they have many other types of simulators.”A piece of an arm, which we call task trainer, where they might practice starting an I-V. And then we have full body robot mannequins that we call high fidelity simulators or high fidelity mannequins and they can breathe and have heart and lungs sounds and talk,” she says. Patterson says the goal of the simulation program is simple.

“This is intended to be a safe space for students to practice and get feedback, either from our patients or from their faculty, and then to, you know, use that feedback to improve and practice some more,” she says. Patterson says simulation training has advanced along with other medical practices. “Simulation started a long time ago. This was more like dolls that were used for training, and they were often just a torso and a head, maybe like in C-P-R training, if you think about some of those first trainers,” Patterson says. She says the non-human simulators are now more varied and represent the different things doctors may see. “Now they are full body, they have arms and legs, they have different skin tones, they have different facial facial features,” she says.”We have female presenting mannequins. And then just depends on the learning need. We have ones that can deliver babies, we have ones that can help simulate traumatic accidents.”

Patterson says they start students out by having them ask simple questions and then continue adding more in the simulations. “We sort of build on their skills, so they might ask question history questions and then another time we might start to learn about the physical exam and add that,” she says, “and then later we might start to work as a team. So we’re practicing teamwork and critical thinking while we’re doing this and we just sort of build on those skills while they’re here with us.” Patterson says the simulation training helps students across several medical specialties.