Computer-controlled patient for pharmacy students
A life-size ‘mock patient’, who can talk, wheeze, groan and bleed, was the centrepiece of a new suite of teaching laboratories unveiled at the Medway School of Pharmacy.
Sim Man
Costing over £30,000, the computer-controlled mannequin, known as ‘Sim Man’ is the first such training tool to be used in any pharmacy school in the UK.
Trainee pharmacists use the realistic model to get hands-on experience of professional skills such as taking blood, putting in a drip and seeing how patients respond to drugs.
Responding to treatment
Professor Clare Mackie, Head of Medway School of Pharmacy, explains: "Sim Man’ can talk to students, letting them know that a particular treatment hurts him, for example.
"He can also display the symptoms of a wide range of cardiac and respiratory illnesses such as heart attack, bronchitis and pneumonia. He reacts to students’ attempts to treat him and he can even be programmed to ‘die’ and then respond to resuscitation attempts."
Mock hospital ward
'Sim Man' is an inpatient on a mock hospital ward, part of the new Clinical Skills Laboratory at the Medway School of Pharmacy campus near Chatham Maritime. This is fully-equipped with real hospital beds, curtains and examination couches. Also resident in the lab is a different type of body: a full-sized skeleton, packed with removable organs, including the heart, spleen, liver and kidneys.
Cameras film students working in the laboratories, so tutors can later help students to review their performance.
Over the counter – and behind the scenes
Other new facilities in the school include the Over the Counter Laboratory, an exact recreation of a high street or community pharmacy, with all the familiar medicines and products on display.
Here students practise using the equipment needed for routine checks which are now on offer in many community pharmacies, such as blood pressure meters and peak flow breathing test kits. They also learn to demonstrate the use of inhalers and nebulisers.
The nearby Dispensing Laboratory recreates what lies behind the scenes in every pharmacy, including locked cupboards for the storage of controlled medicines. Students learn about what goes into drugs in the Pharmacy Technology Laboratory, where they analyse pharmaceuticals, crush tablets, dissolve powders, and heat up substances in order to get to their active constituents.
Lastly, a new Medicines Information Centre offers library and reference materials about all aspects of the profession.
Three new laboratories planned
Three further laboratories are planned. Students will get practical experience in the new Aseptic Suite and make medicines in the new Pharmaceutical Production Unit, which is being built on industrial lines with granulators and drying machines.
They will also learn about micro-organisms in the new Microbiology Laboratory, where they can grow cultures and look at the impact that drugs can have on them. All three new laboratories are due to open next spring.
Massive investment
Medway School of Pharmacy is part of the Universities for Medway project, a £50 million initiative led by the universities of Greenwich and Kent in association with Canterbury Christ Church University and Mid-Kent College. Each institution offers courses on the campus and students of all institutions share campus facilities.
The project has been supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Medway Council, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Thames Gateway Programme) and the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA).
