High-tech infant mannequins are helping health care staff at Corniche Hospital learn how to resuscitate newborn babies. “Neonatal resuscitation training is crucial,” says Peter Raupp, M.D., consultant neonatologist at Corniche Hospital and a U.S.-accredited regional trainer for the Neonatal Resuscitation Program of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Heart Association.
“The training module puts students in amazingly lifelike situations. The trainees obtain all information on how to proceed with life-saving actions directly from the mannequin itself, which is remote-controlled by the instructor. The instructor steps back and is no longer directly interacting with the student. Such a degree of simulation is ‘a dream come true’ and is quantum leap for neonatal life support training.”
Corniche Hospital, a SEHA HealthSystem facility that is managed by Johns Hopkins International, is a 235-bed maternity health care center, and is the first hospital in the Gulf Region to use the sophisticated mannequin, called SimNewB Advanced.
It can lie limply or move like a newborn baby—emitting grunts, whimpers or lusty cries. Not only can it mimic the movements of a distressed child, it can also change color (pink or blue) to mirror the signs of cardiopulmonary health, or distress, in a newborn. The mannequin also has an adjustable heartbeat and breathing rate, ranging from zero to normal. Designed to be as lifelike on the inside as the outside, the “baby’s” airway can be intubated and its umbilical cord catheterized.
“The first minutes after birth are known to be the most dangerous in a human being’s life,” says Judy Lee, M.D., chief medical officer, Corniche Hospital. “Skillful resuscitation can make a huge difference and save newborns from death and lifelong disability. Since 2003, when the Emirates Perinatal Society established the national standards for neonatal resuscitation, the NRP has been instituted in all major maternity hospitals across the UAE. The Corniche Hospital team believes that it is essential to establish cutting-edge, state-of-the-art neonatal life support training through providing a new education centre and making SimNewB mannequins available to physicians and nurses at our health care facility.”
At Corniche, more than 320 doctors, nurses and midwives have been trained in NRP since 2007.
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