In the acute ward, a nurse is bent over a patient on a bed and asking how they feel.
- I’ve got chest pains, something’s pressing, I can’t breath, the patient groans, and is clearly in great discomfort.
The alarm suddenly sounds, and the pulse line on the monitor flattens out. His heart has stopped. The duty doctor is called, and the nursing team starts resuscitation. After a few hectic moments, the heart starts beating again.
Fortunately, this is not a genuine emergency. The lifesavers are nursing students from the University of Stavanger being trained at the Stavanger Acute Medicine Foundation for Education and Research (Safer), which opened in May.
Joint initiative
The UiS, Stavanger University Hospital (SUS) and Laerdal Medical AS took a joint initiative in the autumn of 2004 on establishing this facility.
The aim was to strengthen acute medicine teaching and patient safety, primarily by enhancing the expertise of personnel at the three parent organisations. Safer is also intended to pursue research and develop courses.
It will participate in an active network collaboration with leading international medical simulation centres.
Tore Lærdal, president of Laerdal Medical AS, was one of the people who came up with the idea of the centre, and is strongly involved in its development.
- In 2002, we proposed to what were then the Rogaland Central Hospital and Stavanger University College that our collaboration should accelerated, he explains.
- We were willing to donate money to a network and to finance a professorial chair and three annual research fellowships for a five-year period.
- We also have suitable premises and were prepared to donate these to a foundation of this kind. It feels very satisfying today to see Safer completed and in use.
He notes that his company has proud traditions in Stavanger. Since 98 per cent of its production is exported, he finds it particularly gratifying to participate in something local.
- This city has a leading international acute medicine community, and we need impulses from there. So it’s interesting that plans are now being laid for a master’s in acute nursing.
Great opportunities
University director Per Ramvi also sees great opportunities with Safer.
- Much good effort and great enthusiasm underpin this centre. It represents our arena for research and development with acute medicine, and means a lot for the UiS, he notes.
- We also want to develop and strengthen our research collaboration with SUS. Our goal is to find our niche in medical technology and create a national speciality here.
- Safer gives us a broader perspective and shows how we can work in a cross-disciplinary way to develop research.
Very significant
Marit Boyesen, dean of the social sciences faculty, says that Safer will be very significant for education and research at the UiS, particularly where patient safety is concerned.
- UiS nursing students have already had the benefit of using the facilities, she says.
Ninety-five per cent of them give it top marks.
Returning to the ultra-modern training facility in central facility, the patient turns out to be a manikin who hears and speaks with the aid of assistant professor Otto M Aareskjold from the UiS. He sits at an advanced control panel behind a one-way mirror and runs the whole scenario with the aid of a technician.
Little otherwise distinguishes the conditions and the setting from any modern hospital. A specially adapted ambulance stands nearby.
A mock-up of a residence is going to be added later, so that health personnel can simulate all stages in an emergency from fetching the patient at home until he or she arrives at hospital.
This is how lives are saved.
Text: Thomas Bore Olsen and Egil Rugland
Photo: Elisabeth Tønnessen
