Pokagon Band, Four Winds fund pediatric simulators

SimMom, Premature Anna and SimJunior will be the newest “patients” at Beacon Children’s Hospital.

Thanks to a donation from the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and Four Winds Casinos, these simulators will be located in a new training lab and will assist in the education and training of area pediatric healthcare professionals.

The Pokagon Band and Four Winds presented a check for $85,000 to Beacon Children’s Hospital on Wednesday morning at a special ceremony in downtown South Bend. In attendance were: Kreg Gruber, chief operating officer, Beacon Health System, Frank Freedman, chief operating officer, Four Winds Casinos, John P. Warren, chairman of the Pokagon Band,

The donation represents the proceeds from the 2017 Four Winds Invitational, which took place June 9 to 11 at Blackthorn Golf Club in South Bend. The funds will underwrite the three Laerdal Patient Simulators.

This is the seventh year of the partnership between the Pokagon Band and Beacon, with donations totaling more than $430,000.

In years past, the Invitational helped construct a multi-story building above the Memorial Leighton Trauma Center for the general pediatrics unit, Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, Newborn Intensive Care Unit, and the Pediatric Hematology-Oncology Clinic.

The new training-simulation lab in the Children’s Hospital will be outfitted with simulators to replicate actual scenarios that healthcare professionals will find in pediatric care, including:

• SimMom, a full-body birthing simulator to facilitate multi-professional obstetrics training;
• Premature Anna, a 25-week preterm baby simulator to instruct professionals on proper care and resuscitation of pre-term patients; and
• SimJunior, an interactive mannequin that replicates a 6-year-old boy, allowing staff to train on both routine scenarios and complications.

These mannequins can be used for teaching and training patients and caregivers and be taken on the road to train staff at other area hospitals in northern Indiana and southwest Michigan. Pokagon Band and Four Winds Casinos funds in previous years have also allowed Beacon Children’s Hospital to purchase a pediatric ambulance, MedFlight incubator and ultrasound, giraffe warmers for the NICU and virtual reality goggles for pediatric patients.