A nursing instructor and her business partner have filed the first patent from Lethbridge College for a device to add realism to patient simulations.
Karen Kennedy, co-ordinator of Lethbridge College’s Simulated Patient Health Environment for Research and Education (SPHERE) lab, teamed with Colleen Ward to create Simleggings. Simleggings are designed to zip over the ankles and lower legs of a human patient simulator to display pitting edema, a symptom resulting from an abnormal accumulation of fluid in body tissues, indicative of specific diseases of the heart, liver, lungs and kidneys.
Kennedy, who holds a bachelor of science in nursing and a master’s of education, has facilitated simulated clinical experiences for the past five years with health-care students and professionals, and has participated in the design and set up of simulation units.
“Those of us who facilitate learning with simulated patients recognize the importance of creating as real a client presentation as possible,” says Kennedy. “Student learning is optimized when their senses of sight, touch, hearing, smell and yes, in some cases, taste are engaged.
“One of the most popular simulated experiences for our nursing students has involved a patient with chronic heart failure who goes into cardiac and respiratory arrest. In this scenario, we do several things to make this client as realistic as possible. What we didn’t have was a way to display pitting edema.”
Simleggings can be used on standardized patients (people trained to mimic a client with a particular illness/disease), or modeled in the classroom by instructors and students. They exhibit the characteristic “pitting” when pressure is applied to the material and can be made in a variety of skin colors.
Ward, who lives in Stirling, holds a bachelor of science in home economics, is an experienced seamstress and was instrumental in the design and manufacture of Simleggings.