For two years, nursing staff and students at the regional hospital have been trying to save Simon's life.
Sometimes they're successful. Other times they are not.
Simon, a simulation mannequin, has been offering a realistic patient setting at the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre, which has provided the hospital with a unique educational opportunity for both staff and students.
Health Sciences Centre interprofessional educator Tracey Hill said Simon can be taken care of the same way as a real patient.
"We can perform different procedures on him such as CPR," Hill said. "We can even defibrillate him, so we can shock him to get his heart started again and he moans, cries, sweats, groans, yells and urinates."
Simon was brought in as a powerful tool in health professional education, which has been proven to help improved the knowledge, skills and ability of health care providers.
Simon allows nursing staff to examine team work, communication and different competency's such as behavioural or technical aspects.
"It helps if we have Simon for education purposes," Hill said.
"We can actually improve on team work, which can result in a reduction in medical errors, making our processes work a little better and enhancing patient safety and patient outcomes."
Hill added the simulation provides a safe learning environment for health care professionals taking care of patients.
Simon is used in interprofessional mock code blues, a patient who requires resuscitation or in need of immediate medical attention.
An entire team who could consist of a respitory therapist, nurse, physician and other health care providers will arrive to take care of Simon and sometimes it's not clear whose role is what when taking care of a patient in that situation.
"The mock code blues are really good because the whole team is there performing their roles and they are communicating with each other to make sure they know whose doing what," Hill said.
"You know where they are in the continuum of care with that patient, so it improves the communication and it helps identify what went well during the revival and what might work better."
Hill said it allows the team to work together and make mistakes to eliminate potential mistakes with a real patient in the future.
The interprofessional educators try and incorporate patient and family centered care in the scenarios, so often they bring someone in to act as a family member to see if the staff are considering the needs of the family while they are taking care of the patient.
Hill said it provides a little bit more depth to the scenario.
The simulations run between three to twelve minutes and afterward there's a debriefing, which is the most important part.
"That's where the real learning happens," Hill said.
"The interprofessional educators have been trained in debriefing techniques, so we are able to get the whole team together and talk about what happened, what went well and what would work better in the future and for the most part the participants have said it's been a very valuable experience."
Hill said Simon is used about once every three weeks and she hopes to be able to use him more often.
The emergency department and ICU have been using Simon as well for cardiac arrest response training and testing.
