Lightweight, Durable CPR Manikin

Illinois has around 700,000 high school students. Illinois Heart Rescue is trying to get them all trained in CPR.

That’s a huge task, as you can imagine, but one made easier with the help of Prestan’s new Ultralite Manikins, which the group’s program director, Teri Campbell, discovered at EMS World Expo 2014.

“They were the solution to the problem I had,” says Campbell, RN, BSN, CEN, CFRN. “The manikins we were using were great, but they were intended for one-time use. For my project I needed a product I could use repetitively, and that was going to withstand the rigors of teenagers and kids and adults doing CPR many times a week, many times a month.”

Prestan’s Ultralite Manikins come in four-packs that helped ILHR assemble CPR instruction kits it passed out to the state’s regional education offices, which manage their use by high schools. Each kit includes 16 stackable training manikins, two AED trainers, a training DVD and educational support materials.

Ultralite Manikins are compact and lightweight, with a true-to-life feel and anatomically correct design that includes the xiphoid process and visible chest rise with lung bag use. It allows realistic compressions to a depth of two inches and is compatible with AED trainer pads. The four-pack comes with four manikin torsos, four heads, four compression pistons and 50 face-shield lung bags in a specially designed, convenient carry bag.

ILHR’s efforts aren’t limited to state schools; it also works with hospitals, fire departments and across communities toward the end of doubling neurologically intact survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. Prestan Ultralite Manikins have been a useful addition to that quest over all venues.

“I have other manikins I can use, but they’re heavy and cumbersome, and it really is a burden for our volunteers to bring them to training,” says Campbell. “So I really appreciate the light weight and portability and durability of the Prestan product. They also provide a more realistic feel—students have to push harder and use better CPR body mechanics. When I see them using this manikin, I feel much more confident that they’ll be able to use these skills on a person.”

For more, see https://www.prestanproducts.com/ultralite.html