At Laurel Business/Technical Institute the School of Healthcare offers a Specialized Associate Degree in Respiratory Therapy. Respiratory therapists work with patients to offer long-term care for chronic conditions.
It is a health care specialty that focuses on prevention, diagnosis, treatment, management and rehabilitation of patients with breathing or other cardiopulmonary disorders.
Laurel Technical Institute has 5 campus locations total. It is a family-owned and community-oriented company, offering an array of allied health programs, business & trade training programs. Of the allied health programs the respiratory program is the largest.
We recently spoke with Monica Simko, BSRC, RRT, the Director of Allied Health
Program Director, Respiratory Therapy for Laurel Technical Institute, located in Sharon, PA.
Program Director, Respiratory Therapy for Laurel Technical Institute, located in Sharon, PA.
What training challenges are you able to meet by using the RespiSim System?
We have overcome the challenge of creating realistic patient-ventilator scenarios. For example, we are now able to allow students to manually ventilate the RespiPatient Manikin. Also, to do things like changing the resistance and compliance settings, so that students can actually observe the changes in the manikin for different patients and disease states.
"We were not able to reproduce these conditions prior to acquiring the RespSim System.
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Has this had an impact on your school facilities?
"Yes, for our students, we want to offer state-of-the-art equipment and capabilities. Using the RespiSim System, being able to change the settings and demonstrate how that affects the manikin and ventilator is key. In fact, this has been so successful, that we are hoping to also offer a multi-disciplinary program involving some of the allied health programs. This would consist of conducting patient scenarios, involving the whole “health team”. So, RespiSim has expanded our ability to simulate scenarios, and teach the concept of teamwork as well. It will also allow us to expand our programming, by starting up this inter-disciplinary health program.
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Is there something you find unique about the RS System, that you were unable to find elsewhere?
"Yes, it has to do with the flexibility of the RespiSim System. Having the capability to change patient settings, on-the-fly, being able to toggle between different disease states and severity levels, and having students experience the changes. We don’t really have these options with other manikins/systems. This is definitely a unique feature, the ability to simulate a spontaneously-breathing patient.
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What is the value of the RS System?
"You can’t really put a number on it. But, RespiSIm has greatly increased the value of the respiratory program. As a small school, the ability offer a state-of-the-art system, has definitely increased the value of our hands-on learning environment.
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How does the system benefit your students?
"By giving the students a more realistic experience, short of using actual humans! Also the RespiSim system makes it much easier for the instructors to relate the particular subject being studied and thereby link it to the actual hands-on portion of the training."
Would you recommend RS to other teaching institutions?
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Yes, because of the realism and being specific to respiratory, the system is a winner. We applied for a state grant, for a specific amount allocated for respiratory training. We looked into a handful of manikins from other companies, but the RespiSim was the one that dealt specifically with breathing and the heart - which has allowed us to meet the objectives and goals of our respiratory program.
Also, because it is a compact portable unit, we actually share the RespiSim with another campus in Uniontown, PA for their respiratory program. However, if approved for another grant, we would definitely buy another unit, for that other facility."
Quote:
“The RespiSim System benefits our students, by giving them as realistic an experience as possible, short of using actual humans!"