Hi everyone: I work at a state college...no funds coming our way and we are being asked to do more with less (sounds familiar, eh)? Does anyone have some fun, cheap items that can be used to simulate nursing skills? I am talking pool noodles for fake arms, soda bottles for cath practice...but are there other ideas out there? Would love to hear. Thanks in advance.

Apple juice for urine; it is naturally positive for sugar and, after being left at room temperature for a while, becomes positive for ketones as well.

Take an eggplant, peel it, dice and fry in 1/2 cup of olive oil. When it is good brown, add 2 diced onions, one diced, peeled and seeded tomato or a cup of canned diced tomatoes. Fry till onions are good colored, cover and stew all together for 30 min. Salt, pepper, red pepper, lemon juice, some more water or oil if mix dries up. When it is ready, roughly mash it snd get quite cold. It is a very good veggie pate, but in my times we also used it as training poop.

Protein in urine: mix one egg white with a cup of water and let the mix drip through cheesecloth in a cup of apple juice. 3 tablespoons of mix per cup, approximately.

Flippery, slippery veins: boil long macaroni with empty space indide in water till soft, cool, fill with water colored dark red with food coloring. Put between two panels of softly stretched plastic cut from cheapest kind of trash bags. We had them arranged in cardboard frames. Gives really good feeling.

Excellent ideas! We just did specimen collection last week and tried putting some "meat juice" (sorry, that's what the butcher called it) in our urine and stool samples for "positive blood." It worked pretty well. We werent sure how to do sugar in the urine except to put soda in it (ineffective). we will definitely try these ideas. Much appreciated.

Curious how did you secure the food coloring in the noodles? This sounds like an interesting idea I just need a bit more explanation. Thank you! Do you have a picture?