Starting early next year, rural health care workers will have access to the same sophisticated training dummies their counterparts in Grand Forks can get from UND.
But unlike the university, where dummies are at a centralized training center, these new dummies will be mobile, going to the students at whatever rural hospital or clinic they happen to be, according to Patricia Moulton, an administrator in the university's School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
The shortage of rural health care workers means they have very little time to commute to larger communities to train, she said. "They don't have anybody to replace them."
Moulton is assistant director of UND's Area Health Education Center, a federally funded program run by different universities statewide. The centers do everything from training workers to raising awareness of health care careers among youngsters.
The federal grant that she filed landed AHEC $250,000 for five dummies. AHEC staff will operate the dummies.
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The dummies include a simulated pregnant patient and newborn; a simulated adult, child and toddler; and a simulated cardiac patient. All are wired so they can act realistically, such as bleeding, crying out and having heartbeats.
Training dummies allow health care workers to practice responding to rare conditions, which may be heightened because of demographic patterns in rural areas, according to Moulton. For example, there aren't as many births in rural areas and births where, say, the baby's shoulder is stuck in the birth canal are even rarer.
There are AHEC offices at UND, Mayville State University and in Hettinger in the southwest corner of the state. A northwest office is to be opened soon. The dummies will be rotating through all the rural offices throughout the state.
Reach Tran at (701) 780-1248; (800) 477-6572, ext. 248; or send e-mail to ttran@gfherald.com .
