The Hannaford Center for Safety, Innovation and Simulation is part of Maine Medical Center’s Department of Medical Education and is the only center of its kind in the state. The facility features three distinct learning environments: the Simulation Lab, the Standardized Patient Lab, and the Skills Lab. Each provides a realistic, high-tech setting that allows clinicians to build or enhance their clinical skills and team communication through repeated practice.

The Hannaford Center for Safety, Innovation and Simulation is located in Portland at Maine Medical Center’s Brighton campus.

Mission

Our mission is to research and advance the delivery of high-quality, safe, and effective patient care throughout the institution and the region by integrating cutting-edge simulation technologies and educational practices into the training of all learners in a safe, interactive, and transformative environment.

Vision

The Hannaford Center for Safety, Innovation, and Simulation at Maine Medical Center will strive to become a highly-regarded, nationally-accredited, interprofessional learning environment. Using sophisticated simulation technologies and educational practices, we will enhance the quality of care and patient safety at Maine Medical Center and throughout Maine.

Providing a safe, learner-focused, and patient-oriented environment, the Center will promote the inclusion of simulation into the training of all healthcare providers.

By active engagement in simulation-based research, the Center will become a laboratory that discovers and disseminates the highest standards of medical education and clinical care. We will serve as a unique resource to other healthcare providers and educators in the region.

The Simulation Center opened its doors on October 5th, 2010. The 18,000 square-foot facility is a fully dedicated facility for conducting both courses and research related to Standardized Patient and Simulation-based training, with emphasis on improving patient safety.

Equipped with the latest computer technology as well as a state-of-the-art software system, the Simulation Center provides educators and learners with a high degree of flexibility when it comes to designing and playing out new scenarios within the Center. We have the ability to start a scenario in the Standardized Patient Lab (with students and actors) and have it progress so that the “patient” (now a patient simulator) is brought to the Trauma room, then the OR, and then the ICU, finally ending the scenario in the Patient Room.

Hannaford joined the effort in early 2010 with a generous donation. The company’s commitment to economic empowerment, youth development, community support, and a healthy Maine is strongly aligned with Maine Medical Center’s vision of creating a pipeline of well-educated, highly-skilled Maine physicians and nurses. Together, we are creating a training center that will provide the vital resources for medical students and continuing learners, who will, in turn, bring the very best care to the bedside.

The Simulation Lab includes three fully-equipped, accurate representations of MMC clinical environments: an Operating Room, a Trauma Bay/Intensive Care Room, and a Medical/Surgical Patient Room. These rooms are equipped and furnished in much the same fashion as MMC’s actual clinical settings.

The Operating Room is an exact replica of an operating room in MMC’s Scarborough Surgery Center. The Trauma Bay, which will also support intensive care scenarios, resembles the trauma bays in MMC’s Emergency Department. The Medical/Surgical Patient Room is comparable to MMC’s patient care rooms.

These high-fidelity simulation rooms contain sophisticated mannequins, known as patient simulators. Patient simulators are designed to mimic human physiology and accurately respond to medication. The simulators come in preemie, newborn, infant, pediatric, and adult models and can present as either male or female.

Adjacent to each high-fidelity room is a dedicated Control Room. From here, the simulation specialists operate the patient simulator from dedicated computers within the room. The Control Rooms also house the audio-visual control systems where the simulation specialists can manipulate the cameras so the best view of interactions can be achieved. The educator (instructor) works in concert with the staff to direct and modify simulation scenarios, watch the performance of learners and direct the confederate actors, and even provide the patient’s voice through the simulator.

The Hannaford Simulation Center has two sections dedicated to hands-on skills: the General Skills Lab and the Surgical Skills Lab.

The General Skills Lab is designed to be a highly flexible and multi-functional space. The room can be set up for practicing on a variety of airway trainers, medical task trainers, arterial access trainers and IV trainers.

The room is equipped with an integrated audio-video system so that it can be used as a classroom and sessions can be recorded for future training.

The Surgical Skills Lab focuses on providing the training aids necessary to support MMC’s multiple clinical programs. The room currently contains laparoscopic trainers, suturing skills trainers and ultrasound guided access trainers. As with all the other training rooms in the Center, the video feeds from this room can be viewed from any other computer in the facility.

The Standardized Patient (SP) program at MMC uses people of all demographics from the community to help teach and evaluate medical students, residents, faculty, and other allied healthcare providers at MMC. The program was created in 2002 to provide a learning and assessment resource for undergraduate medical education. Since then, the program has expanded beyond medical students to help teach and evaluate residents and multi-disciplinary staff in multiple functions of their profession, including physical examinations, counseling, interviewing, history-taking, communication skills, and personal interaction with patients. Faculty members at MMC have found the SP methodology to be an innovative way to teach and assess a learner’s clinical skills.

The Standardized Patient Lab at the Hannaford Simulation Center takes the SP program to a new and exciting level. We now partner with Tufts University and host hybrid events that combine work with SPs and high-fidelity simulators!

On a more basic level, the new facility at Brighton Medical Center now incorporates state-of-the-art audio-visual capabilities with the latest software technology especially designed for the Standard Patient program. With these advancements, developing, designing, changing, and executing Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs) and Observed Structured Teaching Exercises (OSTEs) will be a much more efficient and streamlined process for the instructors, faculty, and learners.

To learn more about work as a standardized patient, please visit our Frequently Asked Questions document.

To become a standardized patient, please e-mail us for the date of our next Standardized Patient Information Session.

The Hannaford Simulation Center uses commercially available simulators and state-of- the-art trainers for teaching and research.

In the Simulation Lab we use several mannequins to support high-fidelity scenarios: the Human Patient Simulator (METI), SimMan (Laerdal), and Noelle (Gaumard). These are life-size, computer-model-driven mannequins that mimic many elements of human physiology, such as a heartbeat, pulse, and breathing. They can also accurately respond to procedures such as ventilation, CPR, intravenous medication, and catheterization. The METI HPS model is equipped with the additional capability of being able to inhale oxygen and nitrogen, exhale carbon dioxide, and accurately respond to medication.

Our high-fidelity simulators include the following:

• Adult patient simulators: Used in all areas of the simulation center and for high-fidelity training. These mannequins can simulate many human physiologic functions like inhaling oxygen/exhaling carbon dioxide and presenting.
• Pediatric patient simulators (representing a five-year-old child or one year old).
• Birthing simulators: These mannequins can be programmed to represent a mother in varying stages of pregnancy and can simulate the delivery of a baby. They are wireless and have elaborate monitoring systems.
• A high-fidelity simulator with 12 lead and lung compliance capabilities for advanced cardiovascular training.
• Newborn patient simulators.
• A premature-infant patient simulator.
• An ultra-preemie patient task trainer.
• A cardiopulmonary auscultation simulator: Used for training on cardiovascular diseases. It allows for very fine listening of 30 different heart and lung sounds, ranging from common conditions to rare diseases.
   

The General Skills Lab currently features a wide variety of different trainers and equipment, including:

• A 3-D Transesophageal Echocardiogram and Transthoracic Echocardiogram ultrasound trainer.
• Ultrasound-capable skills trainers for FAST training, central-line-access training, and nerve-block training.
• Adult, pediatric, infant and neonatal difficult-airway trainers
• Adult, pediatric and infant venous and arterial access trainers.
• A scrub sink, where students are evaluated on their pre-surgery preparations.