Southern Vermont College’s nursing program has traded in plastic dummies for a brand-new simulation lab, complete with high-tech simulated patients.

“They have very complex and incredible abilities, and they’ve been designed to mimic actual diseases and situations in the hospital,” said Patricia Wrightsman, nursing program chairwoman.

The mannequins breathe, talk, move, cry, drool, and have heartbeats and lung sounds – incredibly life-like, albeit a little creepy. Schools can purchase different training scenarios, and can also program their own. The college currently has an adult – which can become either a man or a woman – and a baby. It also has a lower-tech child and birthing mother.

“The whole goal is to be able to have your students in a lab setting engaging in serious and complex situations, and allowing them to have the ability to make decisions and take actions,” Wrightsman said. “Some of those decisions might be wrong, but they get to actually be in charge and do it, which would never be allowed in a hospital on real people.”

Students work in groups of four or five and take on different roles. The situations are filmed, and students and teachers sit down and analyze the procedure.

They allow the students to experience high-risk situations as well as more mundane tasks, such as drawing blood – or water, in the mannequin’s case – that they are not allowed to do during their clinical sessions at hospitals.

“It’s hard at first, because in your mind it’s just a mannequin,” senior Andi Graybill said. “But after a while I found myself talking to it. You can feel it has a pulse, and verbal responses. After a while, it’s really hard not to think it’s real.”

Students are expected to treat the mannequins as real people, and all the rules of a hospital apply in the lab.

Graybill said the first time she went into the lab, she didn’t introduce herself, and the mannequin promptly asked her what her name was.

“It’s going to be a great tool,” Graybill said. “I think it will be a tremendous help.”

Students said they were excited to practice high-risk situations in the simulation lab – something they would never be allowed to be involved in at a hospital.

“I like that I can mess up in the situation and I’m not going to kill (a patient),” senior Heather Broome said. “It’s not like, ‘Oh my God, I just punctured an artery.’ I feel a lot more confident trying something.”