By Elizabeth Obreza
'Noelle' has just arrived to in the Nursing Learning Center at BYU. She talks, breathes and gives birth to baby 'Hal.' She is the only high-tech female simulation model in the NLC, replacing the center''s more basic 'Noelle' model.
She''ll help nursing students prepare for the real delivery room in a series of three to four nursing simulations during their labor and delivery clinical.
However, before students can be trained with 'Noelle,' the pediatric and maternal newborn instructors have to be trained on the new simulation technology. A handful of nursing faculty will spend more than 10 hours this week learning how to operate 'Noelle' and baby 'Hal.'
The technology, which requires four different computers to operate, allows students to practice treating a mother in delivery as well as a newborn infant.
'Students need to know how to react,' said Colleen Tingey, Nursing Learning Center supervisor.
The student''s reaction determines how the simulation changes and develops. One simulation exercise will require nursing students to treat 'Noelle''s' post-partum hemorrhaging. Gestational hypertension, or high blood pressure, will be the crisis of another scenario. Tingey said the nursing faculty might incorporate a simulation where baby 'Hal''s' shoulder catches on 'Noelle''s' pelvis.
'Students say helps them feel more prepared to help so they are more part of the process,' said nursing professor Shelly Reed.
Reed will use 'Noelle' and baby 'Hal' in the course called 'Nursing Care of the Childbearing Family.' 'Somebody donated to the college in 2005, but nobody knew how to use her,' Reed said.
Until now, nursing students dressed-up a more sophisticated male simulator in a wig and bra to practice these scenarios.
'The old model was louder,' Reed said. ' could hear the hydraulics inside of her during the contractions.'
The technology of the new 'Noelle' is more refined.
'It is easier to imagine her in birth situation,' Reed said.
Baby 'Hal' has experienced even more changes than 'Noelle.'
'The baby in the old model was not at all sophisticated,' Reed said.
This baby 'Hal,' however, has a soft head and appendages with blue lights that illuminate when he is not being oxygenated.
Keith Kling, instrumentality engineer with the BYU instrument shop, flew to Miami, Florida to receive 'Noelle' training. He said he was excited to install Noelle.
He said called his wife and said, 'I helped deliver a baby today.'