Models Replace Animal Use and Improve Nurses' Ability to Help Babies
For
Immediate Release:
October
31, 2012
Contact:
Tasgola
Bruner 202-483-7382
Fayetteville, N.C. -- To help save animals' lives and modernize training for nurses who treat critically ill newborn babies, PETA has donated 15 newborn simulators to Fayetteville-based Carolinas Association of Neonatal Nurse Practitioners (CANNP) for use in its training programs.
The simulator donation means that CANNP will not use animals during skills laboratories that teach emergency neonatal procedures, including inserting tubes into the windpipe and umbilical blood vessels, cutting open the chest to drain fluid from around the lungs, and extracting spinal fluid by sticking needles in the spine. The new simulation models were used last month during a training session and will be used at this spring's CANNP conference.
"This donation is literally a lifesaver: It will advance education in the care of newborn babies while ensuring that no animals are killed for nurses' training," says PETA Senior Vice President of Laboratory Investigations Kathy Guillermo. "PETA urges all medical teaching programs to follow CANNP's example and embrace modern, effective, and humane learning methods."
"The National Standard of Competency Maintenance set by the National Association of Neonatal Nurse Practitioners requires practice every one to two years in a skills lab if certain procedures have not been performed in the clinical setting a specified number of times, and practitioners have found the use of fetal pigs during these skills labs upsetting," says CANNP Executive Director Lee Shirland. "Being able to perform a lifesaving skill quickly and efficiently in a crisis is critical to the survival, morbidity, and care of the sick or premature newborn. Thanks to PETA's generous donation of realistic manikins, practitioners across North Carolina now have the opportunity to master and maintain skills regularly without hurting or using any animals."
Studies show that training on simulators better prepares medical providers to treat infants and newborn babies than crude animal laboratories do. Other organizations that use only modern simulators include the National Association of Neonatal Nurses, which ended its use of animals last year after a PETA donation.
The simulators were donated in part by the McGrath Foundation Family, which supports PETA's work to replace the use of animals in laboratories with more effective and humane non-animal models. For more information, visit CANNP.org and PETA.org.