Goldfarb Adds Realism to Simulation Through Moulage
Posted By: Nikki Llorin Eaves 
Date Posted: November 15th, 2011 Category: Other
How do you make nursing better at the bedside? By educating and training future nurses to care for mock patients in the most realistic ways possible.
At Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College, simulation is an integral part of the curriculum. Students practice their skills on mannequins before they see real patients. But a simulation lab scenario isn’t complete without a touch of moulage.
Moulage is the art of applying artificial, but realistic injuries for emergency training purposes. It is a technique originally designed to train military and emergency response personnel.
At GSON, a team of clinical simulation facilitators – registered nurses Debbie Sutter, Gale Bunt, Tim Shinabery and Sue Brown – apply moulage on mannequins to realistically portray the conditions or injuries that nursing students encounter in the simulation labs.
Photo/Caption: GSON simulation staff members apply “moulage” on nursing student volunteers. Photo by Kelly Fleming.
Moulage can be used to create simulated cuts, abrasions, bruising, skin lesions, surgical wounds, among countless other fluids and injuries. They are created from a variety of materials, from theater make-up, latex, gel effects products, food coloring, Vaseline, and various food products.
“Adding moulage greatly enhances the realism and fidelity of our simulation scenarios. It affords our students the opportunity to care for high-risk patients in a safe learning environment,” says Beth Haas, MPH, director of GSON’s Clinical Simulation Institute. “The simulation facilitators are great at coming up with recipes to mimic high-risk patient experiences. It really helps students to engage in the simulation activity when they see realistic wounds on the mannequins.”
On Nov. 2, Sutter, Bunt, Shinabery and Brown put their skills on the stage for a mass casualty disaster drill held at Barnes-Jewish Hospital (BJH). The exercise consisted of a mock scenario of a bomb explosion at three different sites, designed to test how BJH handles patients when at maximum capacity. Among the departments involved in the drill were the emergency department, trauma services, public safety, patient placement, patient transport and spiritual care.
The facilitators were instrumental to creating the “perfect” look for GSON nursing students, who played the role of victims of one of the explosions.
Early in the morning, they were busy applying moulage on the students to help make their injuries as realistic as possible. The students were covered in fake blood, soot and grass. They had a wide variety of bruises, abrasions, blisters, burns and wounds. Each of them held a card with their “patient information,” along with their appropriate triage level that hospital staff must be able to correctly identify based on their visible injuries.
It was a valuable learning experience for the GSON student volunteers. “I gained insight as to how the hospital would respond if a true disaster were to hit St. Louis,” says Christina Nottingham, a student in the Accelerated BSN program. “I also got to experience what it would be like from the patient’s perspective – something that we as nursing students do not often get the opportunity to see.”
View more pictures from the disaster drill moulage session at http://gson-ne.ws/gson-moulage.