Moving the Needle
Learning how to manage a collapsed lung and practice proper needle insertion is a valuable skill for aspiring pediatric nurse practitioners. However, finding a cost-efficient pediatric chest tube trainer in the size of babies and young children can be a challenge.
The University of Tennessee’s College of Nursing found a solution to the problem right on campus. Two senior design teams in the Tickle College of Engineering developed prototypes of pediatric pneumothorax chest trainers that can be used to help train UT nursing students.
Both biomedical engineering groups developed a low-cost, reusable pediatric chest tube trainer capable of simulating key diagnostic and treatment features of pneumothorax, which occurs when air leaks into the space between the lung and chest wall, causing the lung to collapse.
One group developed a chest trainer using an infant-sized prototype (0-6 month) and one group developed one using a child-sized prototype (4-6 years old).
“It’s amazing to know our product will actually be able to be used by nursing students who help treat patients,” said Emma Sieg, who helped design the child-sized prototype with the BioInnovators group. “Hopefully, they’ll get a better understanding of how to diagnose and treat pneumothorax, so when the situation comes up when they are a nurse, they will know how to do it from our model. That is very cool to think about.”
The senior design teams were not allowed to correspond with each other throughout the process to ensure their prototypes were unique. They each took different approaches and had different features that were not available in other models on the market.
“The engineering students are phenomenal. For us to be able to experience how they go about the design process was really cool,” said Susan Hébert, the assistant dean of simulation in the College of Nursing. “Training nurses is more concrete and specific. There’s not a lot of flexibility to let them be creative, because you can’t make mistakes or practice design on real people. The process of what the engineering students do really helps what we do.”
Low-cost collaboration
The BioInnovators group’s model incorporated features such as transillumination-which allows users to shine a light through the lungs-diminished respiratory sounds, and lung compression. The team used memory foam for the lungs, placed two small speakers behind the lungs, and inserted a balloon to fill up and compress the lung. The cost for the prototype was less than $300.
“Being able to reduce that cost was a big help to the nursing college, and our models are a really big upgrade to what they have right now,” said BioInnovators team member Sharon Ogundokun, who plans to attend medical school. “They’re so happy to be able to have better models to train students. It literally recreates what goes on in a pneumothorax for a child.”
The BioInnovators went through nearly 30 designs before finding the ideal prototype. The trial and error required the team to be flexible, innovative, and responsive to the needs of the nursing faculty administrators, which included College of Nursing Simulation Educator Zach Young-Lutz.
In case the prototype needs to be fixed or replaced, the team created a manual for the College of Nursing that contains information on every part and how the model was built.
“This experience taught me a lot about the engineering design process, especially the importance of iteration, problem solving, communication, and balancing functionality with manufacturability and cost,” Seig said. “It also gave me hands-on experience with prototyping, testing, and collaborative design in a medical device setting.”
Although the TCE seniors have graduated, they left behind a tool that will help future pediatric nursing students at UT acquire fundamental chest trauma management skills that could potentially save lives.
“It’s extremely valuable for us to be able to collaborate with the engineering students on projects like this,” Hébert said. “We come up with problems or ideas all the time, but we don’t always have the resources or the time to do what these teams can do. It really helps us.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey ([email protected])