Human Patient Simulator as real as it gets

First Coast Technical College in St Augustine reported to Historic City News this week that its Health Career students, competing for employment in today’s technologically sophisticated healthcare arena, now benefit from a Human Patient Simulator during the course of their studies.

METI-man is a fully automatic patient that replicates over 100 medical scenarios designed for Health Career student training.

“Students see it, hear it, breathe it and live it with the patient,” said Patricia Rench, FCTC health careers coordinator. “Tools, such as METI-man, greatly assist our students in their training for increasingly complex careers.”

The Human Patient Simulator can be instructed by staff to simulate medical conditions from strokes, to convulsions, to lung cancer. He sweats, breathes and has a heartbeat; which can be normal or abnormal, depending on how he’s programmed.

The full-scale human model consists of various tubes, wires, motors, speakers, computer boards and chips, as well as a plastic bladder and other organs covered in a realistic, soft rubberized plastic.

Vitals appear on a monitor as digital readouts, and if students administer the wrong medications, METI-man can be programed to react as if he were a real-life patient.

The life-like behavior can be a bit unnerving when you see it for the first time, Rench told reporters. But, she said, it is the safest and best way to prepare students for actual emergency medical conditions.