The Anesthesia Patient Simulator Center team was on hand April 28, 2009, for the final session of the 2009 University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine Mini Medical School, a program provided in partnership with Osher Lifelong Learning. The 4-week course this year was entitled, “Cardiovascular Disease: What You Should Know.”

Prior to the lecture portion of the evening, there was a “patient” (our Simulator Center’s traveling mannequin) in the Atrium of the Medical Education and Research Facility who was exhibiting signs of cardiac distress. High heart rate and abnormal rhythm got the attention of bystanders who gathered around the patient to form a care-giving team, with guidance from Ann Willemsen-Dunlap, Ph.D., C.R.N.A., Co-Director of the Center.

Various strategies for how to assist the “individual in distress” were discussed and executed, starting with administration of several doses of beta blocker. When this drug therapy failed, it was on to defibrillation, using an automated external defibrillator (AED). An AED is a portable electronic device that automatically diagnoses the potentially life threatening cardiac arrhythmias of ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia in a patient, and is able to treat them through defibrillation, the application of electrical therapy which stops the arrhythmia, allowing the heart to reestablish an effective rhythm. By this point, the “patient” had become unconscious and the team worked to control his airway.