PLAINS TWP. — Victoria blinked her eyes, thanked people for stopping by, screamed “the baby is coming” and had what was probably one of the fastest births on record at Geisinger Wyoming Valley.
And within five minutes of her child Tori’s introduction to the world, she was nine months pregnant and ready to give birth again.
“We can train a team with routine, low-risk events, as well as low frequency, high acuity events we hope not to see,” Dr. Marcel Favetta said as he introduced Victoria, a “high fidelity” birthing simulator the hospital believes will give obstetrics staff members a training in a wide range of birthing situations while in a controlled environment with no real humans at risk.
Victoria can demonstrate tracking motions with her eyes and give a realistic range of blood pressure readings and rates for heart beat and respiration, Favetta said. The baby can emerge smoothly and quickly as Tori did during Monday’s brief demonstration, or present with pretty much any real-world complication such as a breech birth, umbilical cord around the neck or shoulder dystocia, when the shoulders get stuck behind the pelvic bone.
While Favetta did not wait for the delivery of the placenta, he did demonstrate a realistic umbilical cord and showed the faux placenta after it was removed, noting small pieces can be removed exposing a darker red color that would indicate to professionals in the room that part of it remained in the mother, which could be a cause of internal bleeding.
The options are so numerous, from readings on a realistic telemetry screen to inserting intravenous needles and even to Victoria’s own comments, that the variety of simulations are “unlimited,” nurse Elissa Concini said. And while the Tori that emerges is a simpler automaton that mostly just cries for a few minutes, the hospital also has a high fidelity baby to extend lessons into complications with a newborn infant.
Victoria may be relatively motionless in bed, but that’ doesn’t mean she doesn’t move. “She is quite portable,” Favetta said, meaning she can be moved to other locations for additional training. “She is a bit heavy, though.”
Realizing making such a comment about a pregnant women about to give birth might not be politically correct these days, he almost immediately retracted the statement. “I probably shouldn’t say she’s heavy.”
