Sim Lab
What’s the sim lab?
My school has a space dedicated to simulating a hospital environment, thus the name “sim lab.” In it, there are hospital beds, IV poles, hospital bed head units, hospital furniture, wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, and simulated items to replicate most of the basic equipment you might need in a hospital. There’s also several medical mannequins used by nursing students but they’re not the most helpful for PT students. While we were using it, my professors also played hospital noises in the background with lots of beeping, code calls, and miscellaneous chatter.
"Bankstown Hospital Emergency Room" by red.wolf is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
This is an emergency bay at an actual hospital, not the actual sim lab at my school, but the setup is very similar.
What do you do in there?
My PT class was divided into groups of 4 people each at the beginning of the year. Throughout our first year of school, we complete short clinical experiences together that are sprinkled in here and there. In our first semester, we spend 1 day at a local outpatient orthopedic facility, 1 night at our student-run pro-bono clinic, and 1 morning in the sim lab. We also do a lot of group work together for other classes, but that’s stories for another day.
For sim lab, my group split into 2 groups of 2 and took turns practicing treatment for a patient in the hospital and observing our partner doing the same. One of my favorite parts about this experience is getting to work with the acting students from our school! They are taught how a particular surgery or injury might affect someone so that we, the PT students, get a more realistic experience. They yell (with accents), they fall, they vary their personalities, they make up background stories, they forget things. Best of all, they speak to us after we’ve had our practice run to let us know how they felt being our patient. It’s incredibly valuable to get this insight from people who don’t have a background in physical therapy. I love my classmates but um… they’re not the greatest at acting. And neither am I!
We also had some great review and reflection meetings with the professors leading this class. A lot was learned by all!
"I was so sick of walking with that IV pole..." by runner dan is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
What was the hardest part about this experience?
I am the kind of person who likes long pauses in conversation so I have time to think through a response thoroughly before speaking. And when someone else is speaking, I’m listening, not thinking about what I want to say. One of my scenarios involved working with someone who talked NON-STOP. It was really quite impressive; I’ve only heard so many words in such a short period of time when listening to Eminem’s Godzilla. Since I haven’t encountered this specific situation before, I was completely unprepared for it and found it impossible to think because I was always actively listening. I ended up missing a lot of simple things that I haven’t missed since my second week of school. But now I know something else I can work on to become a better physical therapist!
It was also really challenging to work in a such a small space. The “room” was about 8 feet wide and 10 feet long, although the “walls” were just curtains so there was a little wiggling that could be done. In this space (which already had a bed, a few tables, and an IV pole), I needed to bring in a wheelchair, a walker, and portable oxygen AND I needed to walk with my patient actor while managing to not tangle or pull any lines (such as catheters, IVs, chest tubes, drains, nasal cannulas, etc.). I’m glad to say that I’m good at managing the lines but I still felt like a hot mess!
Overall, I enjoyed this day and wish I had the opportunity to do it more frequently!
What else would you like to know? Ask in the comments section below!
