Living in a rural state comes with plenty of built in challenges. The most critical ones include health care emergencies involving the care and delivery of babies. At first glance, it looks and sounds like the real thing, but don't be alarmed. No babies were born at Wagner Community Memorial Hospital today. This is just a simulation.
“We don't purposefully deliver babies in our facility, but we do average about five per year. And so being able to do hands-on learning is huge, especially for those providers and nurses that don't get this every day,” said TiAnna Smith, MD, an emergency physician at Wagner Community Memorial Hospital.
Community Training to Improve Birthing Outcomes
This exercise is just one part of a larger initiative. The Avera Research Institute was funded by the National Institutes of Health to establish a Maternal Center of Excellence, which charges researchers and health providers to go into communities to provide training opportunities like this that will help improve outcomes for moms and babies.
“Fortunately, the Wagner staff here at the hospital and the IHS teams who are doing the simulation together, again. They've done this before in a real-world experience, but to practice it is a really, really important thing because you work on teamwork skills, you work on communication, you know how to do it so everybody's clear on the steps that they need to do. It just builds those community relationships that are so important for supporting these moms and these babies as they make this transition into motherhood, which can be rough sometimes,” said Kimberlee McKay, MD, an OB/GYN and the Medical Research Director of Avera Research Institute.
Simulations Focus on Life-Saving Scenarios
There are two things that the simulation is being based on from actual real-life situations.
- A mom comes in, delivers and then has a hemorrhage.
- When a baby is born preterm and needs resuscitation.
“So then we're going to be working with the team to help them support the neonatal airway and stabilize babies for transport should that be needed,” said McKay.
"It's a great opportunity get a taste of what might come in, and we see it so rarely, so it's nice to practice on mannequins, so you have a little bit in your back pocket when the real thing comes in,” said Berkley Erickson, CNP, at Wagner Community Memorial Hospital.
“These mannequins are so true to life from being able to look at their vital signs, the fetal heart tracing, starting IVs, to doing a cervical check and catching the baby just as we would with a precipitous delivery,” said Smith.
Opportunity to Learn From Communities
“We're providing the simulation, but then community members here are teaching us about how we can help support patients better in their birthing experience,” said McKay.
This direct connection to community leaders is a rare opportunity that highlights collaboration between both health institutions as they work together to better serve and truly understand the cultures in rural communities.
“We're not competitors. We're taking care of the same people, and the way that we can take care of our population and our community is to work together, and so being able to do education like this that involves the staff from both places is huge,” said Smith.
“This education and training is foundational to whatever we do to get our arms around maternal health outcomes but also to sustain the change that's needed over time,” said McKay.
Simulations like this are planned for facilities across the Midwest in the coming months to continue to help improve maternal care.
Avera is one of 10 research centers nationwide to establish a March Center of Excellence. Learn about the program at Avera.
