By Chelon Dyal
BYU?s nursing program is staying at the edge of their field by using one of the most high-tech training tools available in medical institutes ? his name is SAM.
SAM, an acronym for Super Assimilated Man, is an adult sized medical role-play tool. Hooked up to a computer, SAM can reenact any possible medical scenario for an adult patient.
SAM can be a male or female, pregnant or under cardiac arrest. The possibilities are endless and the learning process invaluable, said Colleen Tingey, supervisor of the Nursing Learning Center.
?The advantage to having something like this for teaching nursing students is that you can teach them things in a non-threatening setting,? Tingey said. ?They can come in and practice on SAM, and if they do the wrong thing they might lose the patient here. But I bet when they are with a real person they won?t make those same kinds of mistakes.?
SAM has some very life-like attributes. He runs on the same gasses that humans breathe and students can feel the air coming in and out of his nose and mouth. He opens his eyes, blinks and dilates his pupils. Students can hear his heart beat with a stethoscope and can feel his pulse.
Students can monitor his heart rate, blood pressure, carbon dioxide and oxygen. Students can also put in catheters, hook tubes up to his chest, shock him or administer medicine.
SAM reacts to the treatments based on the scenario that has been programmed for him. Everything from his past and current medical history to gender and weight can be programmed into each scenario so students get the same amount of information they would on a live patient in a hospital.
Shauna Evanson graduated from BYU?s nursing program in April and now works as an operating room nurse for Timpanogos Hospital.
?The benefits of SAM are obvious,? Evanson said. ?The simulated scenarios put a time limit on the care that you give. In real life you do have a time limit whereas in a textbook or on a test you just use your mind and take however long you want to.?
Each scenario is programmed to respond like a real-life situation, with real time and medical constraints.
?After a session with SAM, you sit back and think, ?Wow, that?s how it?s going to be when I?m in the field,?? Evanson said. ?It?s intense.?
Tingey said there has been talk of adding an infant simulation doll to the nursing program, but so far nothing has been approved.