Female Medical Manikins Sharpen First-Response Instincts

TacMed Solutions photo

WASHINGTON, D.C. — South Carolina-based medical equipment company TacMed Solutions is aiming to boost the survivability of women on the battlefield with its female manikin.

MATTi, a whole-body trauma medical simulator, has removable limbs and interchangeable injuries to simulate realistic casualty care scenarios, including amputation, gunshots and sucking chest wounds.

But despite its abundance of features, the manikin’s most crucial aspect may be its female appearance, said Patrick Smith, TacMed’s director of sales.

Clinical studies from Iraq and Afghanistan that analyzed the survivability of females in war found that “women were more likely to die than men,” Smith said in an interview on the sidelines of the National Training and Simulation Association’s Capitol Hill Modeling and Simulation Expo.

Disproportionate female deaths in war are partially due to a lack of female trauma manikins for medical training. Beyond the development of technical skills, manikins create the foundation for what a first responder’s instinctive reaction looks like, according to Smith. Poor access to female manikins means that medics can spend crucial response time deciding what to do instead of jumping into action, he said.

“Most of the studies alluded to the fact that when you have these young combat medics going through training, they’re only training on male manikins — they’re not touching the female body,” Smith explained. “So, when it became wartime and a casualty [occurred] on the battlefield, they were hesitant to go ahead and treat and unclothe her and everything else and search properly, like they do with the males on the battlefield.”

The hesitation only accounted for seconds, but “those seconds were very, very vital for their survival,” Smith said. That’s why there is “such a need, especially in the military,” for female manikins like MATTi.

MATTi is 5 feet, 10 inches tall and weighs between 150 and 160 pounds. She breathes, has a pulse, can display a normal, dilated or constricted pupil and has a built-in communication system that allows medical trainers to speak and hear through the simulator, according to company literature.

The White House received its first MATTi last year, and TacMed has since released new iterations featuring improvements, which have been purchased by the military, Smith said. “They all see the need.”

 

Topics: Emerging Technologies, Training and Simulation