We share one of our Simman with a local hospital.  I discovered that they had left the compressor running for 5 days.  The compressor was still cycling periodically but the chest would not rise and fall.  The compressor did not appear to be overheated.  I bled the lines, let  it rest, and then restarted it.  The only problem I could identify was that the small respiratory bladder had popped off it's connection inside the chest.  It appears to be working fine now.  Does anyone know if there are other issues I should be concerned with?  I tried contacting tech support but was on hold for 15" and then got disconnected before talking with anyone.  Thanks!

Hi Carol,

 Glad you were able to fix your resp bladder w/o problem.  Double check the connections to the cartoid pulses as these sometimes come loose also.  I would just do a quick look through the chest and make sure that all the air connections are attached and then the neck and pelvis.  Some of them are well hidden like the pneumo bags but you can also just have someone go through the program and click on tighten the neck, swell tongue, etc and see if any of the parts are not working before tearing everything apart.  We found that the pneumo bag on the R side had rubbed a hole in itself and would not inflate anymore and therefore let all the others deflate as well.  Something to be aware of.

 Good luck.

Dani

Dani,

  Thanks for the advice.  I didn't have a lot of time to troubleshoot Simman since I had a lab class with simulation on our main campus later that day.  I was not pleased and am worried about the long term ramifications of a compressor running for 5 days.  I will have to go back in the next day or two and check everything out more closely. Carol
 

A long running compressor incident has happened to us before, with no long term damage.  Hopefully you will get off lucky!

---

Randy Wax, MD, MEd, FRCPC
Medical Director, Program for Resuscitation Education and Patient Safety (PREPS)
Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada
Assistant Professor, Critical Care,
University of Toronto
rwax@mtsinai.on.ca
http://www.mshpreps.org

Figured I should post a response to what I eventually discovered with our SimMan.  Called Tech Support who had me individually check every air tube for correct function. We were lucky and only the respiratory bladder was involved.  I reglued the bladder in place with just a touch of super glue and he is one happy SimMan now.