Do you practice your skills on dummies/mannequins

Nursing Students General Students

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As title says.....

Or do you read about it then go out and practice, maybe for the first time, on real people. Things I am talking about are stuff like NG tube insertion, catheterisation etc.

Thanks!:nurse:

Specializes in mental health.
...would you want some one to practice inserting a Foley on you....ouch, I wouldn't.

That's my point! The patient doesn't want someone practicing on them either. If the student has a little experience he's going to have a lot more empathy and hopefully will take more care.

I have a very high pain threshold.

Doctor says to me: "This will only hurt a little"

It hurts like hell.

I say to the doctor: "Have you ever experienced this procedure?"

Doctor says: "No"

I say: "Until you have, you've got no business telling your patients how it's going to feel".

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Wouldn't it be better for students to practice on fellow students so all might experience what the patient will?

Just how many NG's and Foley's do you want to receive? With mannequins students can repetitively practice (knowing that it's not the same...but that you can do the physical steps of a procedure.)

The other consideration is that there are risks associated with every procedure. The patient has consented to those risks because they and the Doc agree that the benefits of the procedure outweighs the risks.....since none of the nursing students require an IV or Foley....they risk/benefit isn't worth it.

The point of the mannequins is that you practice on them to make sure you know the steps of the procedure....then, the first time you do it on a patient, you do it with the direct guidance of your instructor or preceptor.....they don't just have you practice in the lab and set you loose on people.

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That's my point! The patient doesn't want someone practicing on them either. If the student has a little experience he's going to have a lot more empathy and hopefully will take more care.

I have a very high pain threshold.

Doctor says to me: "This will only hurt a little"

It hurts like hell.

I say to the doctor: "Have you ever experienced this procedure?"

Doctor says: "No"

I say: "Until you have, you've got no business telling your patients how it's going to feel".

Are you saying that a nursing student should have procedures practiced on them instead of a mannequin just so they can experience what the patient experiences and empathize more, or am I misunderstanding you?

If that is what you're saying, then I have to tell you that no one needs to experience a foley, an IV, or any other procedure just to have more empathy or take more care in doing the procedure. I understand that it's uncomfortable, but I don't need to experience it personally just to be empathetic and caring. As far as telling someone that something "will only hurt a little", I think it's more of a comfort/reassurance thing for most people, not an attempt at accurately describing a procedure.

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Specializes in Emergency/Cath Lab.

We have dummies we practice on. But what I do is once I learn the procedure, I kind of do an "air" run. It is where I just sit there and run through the motions and procedure just sitting there at the table. Then I try it on the dummies. It helps me learn the steps for some reason.

Oh and never ever tell the pt it is your first time doing something! When I had to do my first foley into a pt, I had an audience of over 6 people and was sweating bullets but I never said it was my first try.

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Specializes in NH, HH, Agency.

We had mannequins. We also practiced some skills on each other when it wasn't too invasive-on our own!

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Specializes in Trauma ICU.

In nursing school I've practiced skills on mannequins extensively, and like many others, the not so invasive skills on fellow students. My Health Assessment professor said to us at the beginning of my first semester- when your family start's running away from you after you've just completed a new chapter...welcome to nursing school.

However in my new job as an ER tech I've also learned that mannequins are NOTHING like the real thing. For example, I've helped a nurse inserting an NG tube on a 90 year old lady vomiting blood with coffee grinds...she certainly didn't hold still like the mannequin did. And don't get me started on IVs...learning straight sticks and IVs on plastic arms is great.

Then you get to the real patient and you watch as that big fat juicy vein rolls. Or is too superficial. Or somehow I got a flash but I need to advance the catheter in a little further to draw blood. If you haven't guessed by now straight sticks and IVs are my current frustration...:banghead:

I think we all need to practice on mannequins- but then of course there is the endless "practice rounds" on a real patient where we need someone with experience to say "yes just like that," and hopefully not "my god what are you doing?" Once that's done hopefully we become proficient :wink2:

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Specializes in IMCU.

:clown: All due respect to my fellow students...no one is coming near me with a catheter tray...no one. As for IV starts...the same. Don't care about the NG tube.:chuckle

We apparently have some new fangled mannequin to practice stuff on. Even if we did practice on each other for the more invasive stuff fellow students aren't going to squirm as much as the sick or injured.

What I want to know is who are the people in those CNA and nursing videos that allow this stuff AND allow filming? You couldn't pay me enough.

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Specializes in PICU/Pedi.
What I want to know is who are the people in those CNA and nursing videos that allow this stuff AND allow filming? You couldn't pay me enough.

My boyfriend and I had a laugh over that same thing last semester when I pointed out to him that the same exact guy was used in all of the catheterization videos! Made me wonder about him a little...:eek:

Oh yeah, and when my sister went to NS ten years ago, they didn't have a lab with dummies and stuff like my school does. They watched videos and then did the skills for the first time on patients!! :no:

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Specializes in SNU/SNF/MedSurg, SPCU Ortho/Neuro/Spine.

i just dont like dummies, they don't give you as much feedback, even the expensive ones, they are still too far from the real thing, IMHO i really prefer to just youtube a procedure, or make believe on a friend... dummies, are a waste of money for the school

(other then transfer techniques, wounds, bed bath/making) they are not really much useful, even the ones who have a heart attack or give birth...

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Dummies first!!! Deff dummies first.

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For some things, the mannequins are very useful. Foleys for example. And moving people.

But for some things, skills lab is just silly. The main thing our school has focused us on are head-toe assessments. They aren't that hard. But when you've assessed EVERY SINGLE person in your group more than once, and all you've heard is "normal, normal, normal", I just don't think it works. Our teacher did pull us out 1 person at a time. He pretended he was the patient, with something wrong (with me it was diabetic neuropathy and he was hard of hearing". I liked that. I kind of wished we'd done it earlier in the semester though, since we start clinicals this week (1 day in the nursing home) and then the hospital after break.

But even that had its limits. He was trying to teach us that even though the patient may have something that throws us for a loop- we have to complete the head-toe to make sure nothing else is wrong. HOWEVER, in the "real" nursing world- we're going to have the chart read, so if there was an abnormality during the previous shift, we'd already know about it.

Giving shots to a dummy was silly too. And I didn't get the EKG machine until I stuck the tabs on a real person.

Cheryl

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Specializes in ..

We started out on those fancy AU$14,000 dummies that have a remote control and a blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate and so forth. They can cough and crackle and wheeze and everything.

I've found practicing wound care on dummies relatively useless, but for learning things like blood pressures it was helpful, especially because the dummies are so rhythmical and computerized. They don't really sound like a "real" person's BP but it helps you get the idea. We had to practice spiking a bag, priming an IV line, connecting it to a patient (the dummies) and then letting it run (the canular and line in the arm were really hooked up to collection bags so we didn't flood the labs), which felt kind of simplistic to me. I mean, it's not that hard....

I like learning on real people once I've read up and learnt the theory. It brings it to life a hell of a lot more for me than pushing a tube up the nostril of a dummy with no anatomy. Do you know how hard it is to find the right spot at the back of the nose for one of those tubes? In a dummy, it's just a big, fat hole!

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