Edmonton’s NorQuest College using ‘life-like’ measles simulator to help identify the disease

Health care professionals are finding new ways to identify measles, which is now seeing a resurgence with Alberta having more cases of the disease than all of the United States.

NorQuest College unveiled a new measles training simulator on Thursday. The simulator includes animated dummy’s giving health care professionals hands-on experience identifying the disease in patients with darker skin tones.

“Most of the textbooks that do have measles pictures in them are against very white skin tones,” said Eryn Winfield, instructor at Norquest College. “So, we want to show our students and teach our students how to assess measles in various skin tones, various populations to be able to recognize and report immediately.”

This simulation is how NorQuest is training healthcare professionals to identify the disease moving forward and moving away from just looking at a picture in a textbook, as the disease makes a comeback.

“Measles isn’t something that health care providers would’ve worked with in recent times, at least before right now with the current crises,” said Quacey Peters, manager at Olson Centre for health simulations.

The dummy’s can be programmed and altered to represent different races, genders and severity of infections.

Simulations will be a part of the practical nurse diploma and healthcare aide certificate programs staring this fall.