In every graduating class there are always one or two names that everyone seems to recognize. At GateWay’s Respiratory Care Program, Stan is the one. Ask any student and he or she will know Stan. They have taken his blood pressure, prescribed specific medication and heard him talk about his pain.
“Stan is as close as possible to a real person. He has only died one time since we got him,” said Edward Hoskins, heath sciences division chair and faculty in the respiratory care program.
Stan “The Man” as he is known, is a high fidelity human patient simulator capable of breathing, bleeding, responding to medication and even dying. Shine a light into his eyes and his pupils will dilate and contract in response. Stan, which stands for “Standard Man,” helps improve the learning process for many students in the respiratory care program.
“I was nervous and scared because he can actually die, “ said fourth semester student, Liam Samelson about working with Stan. “I’m really impressed by the way he works and the way he was set up for us.”
Students practice what they have learned in the lab on Stan. They have to demonstrate a certain level of competencies before moving into a clinical setting.
“Our program is set up in a step wise learning approach,” said Hoskins. “Students learn, practice, and demonstrate competency in class, lab and simulations, and then they go onto practice and demonstrate competency with real patients in clinicals.”
“The simulations were very real,” recalls Samelson. “When I did mechanical ventilation on him his airway presented resistance and I could not get any volume inside so he was in hypoxia. I had to change my plan and do manual ventilation and I had to suction him in order to get rid of the resistance and get some air in him. And that is when his vitals went back to normal.”
The Respiratory Care Program is a four-semester program where students go to clinicals in their second, third, and last semester and work with real patients.
For Samelson, the program has worked well within what he needed and his budget.
“I heard about GateWay’s reputation and a lot of my friends said that GateWay has the best healthcare programs in town,” said Samelson. “It is cheaper, affordable so I just decided to follow this path.”