Robot mom: UNCG unveils new teaching tool for nursing students

UNCG Now









GREENSBORO — UNC-Greensboro’s nursing students won’t start fall semester classes for another month, but a handful of their professors Wednesday got a glimpse of the nursing school’s newest teaching tool.What they saw was a full-body childbirth simulator known as SimMom, a high-tech mannequin that will let UNCG nursing students get realistic experience with labor and delivery.The molded plastic female mannequin comes with a simulated 6-pound newborn, the placenta and an umbilical cord. SimMom can simulate routine vaginal births as well as births with complications — such as an inverted uterus, a prolapsed cord (when the umbilical cord precedes the baby) or a breech birth (when the baby comes out bottom first instead of head first).“This enables us to get everybody through several kinds of scenarios” that UNCG nursing school graduates might see professionally, said Robin Remsburg, the dean of the School of Nursing.UNCG’s nursing students have used an older simulation model for the past several years. Last month, the nursing school took delivery of a $45,000 upgrade made by Laerdal, a Norwegian medical equipment maker famous for its CPR Annie doll used to train people to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. UNCG, in fact, bought the first new-and-improved birthing model to come off the company’s assembly line.This new version has more features than previous models. It’s also wireless.Company rep Sarah Sue Miller, a registered nurse who leads Laerdal’s maternal and newborn division, says the lack of wires means SimMom can be used in a variety of different teaching exercises.If faculty members want to simulate a birth in which the mother has complications that require surgery, she said, nursing students can wheel SimMom from the birthing room to an operating room without having to wrangle cords that connect the mannequin to its computer.The mannequin is designed to act as realistically as ...

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