Oh baby – almost like the real thing

A life-like baby which has a heart beat, breathes, cries and gurgles, is being used for essential emergency training at a Midlands hospital.

'SimBaby', a new addition to Walsall Manor Hospital's training team, will be assisting five new medical students in their infant training.

The group from Birmingham University, who are currently working in A&E and Paediatrics over the next five weeks, will be trained with the help of the simulated manikin.

The £25,000 'baby' is linked up to a laptop which tells the student what the patient's symptoms are.

Students can create emergency scenarios, to test their skills.

Resuscitation officer Phil Jeavon said: "The SimBaby can be programmed to simulate respiratory distress.

"You can imagine the stress a doctor experiences when an infant stops breathing. This gets the medical students more used to this type of scenario. If the proper steps aren't taken, the baby worsens. It even turns blue from lack of oxygen."

At the end of the training, information is then fed back via the laptop on the medics' performance.

"Caring for children is very specialised, particularly in emergency situations. The SimBaby is a wonderful learning tool for both medical students and nurses and takes training to the next level, " Mr Jeavon added.

Medical student Catriona Hall, who is in her fifth and final year at Birmingham University, said: "I'd quite like to progress into emergency medicine, particularly anaesthetics and this type of training is extremely important. It's good to practice what to do in the case of a similar real life situation."

The hospital also has a SimMan, the adult version of SimBaby, which use the same technology and principles.