Dr. Jennifer Arnold’s journey home to St. Petersburg is bringing her back to the very place where she started her life– as an infant at the neonatal intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital.
The renowned pediatric expert in educational medical simulation, neotatologist and star of the hit TLC show The Little Couple recently joined the hospital as the medical director of its expanding Simulation Center where she is working to grow the hospital’s education and patient safety efforts through simulation.
“We are a small, but mighty team, ” she proudly told local media during a morning news conference on Friday.
She explained that during her own medical training, she performed her first spinal tap and intubation on a real baby. The goal of the simulation center is to give surgeons, doctors and nurses real-life experience via medical simulation using specially equipped mannequins to not only educate them, but help prevent mistakes on actual patients.
Providers will be able to watch themselves in their case thanks to audio visual additions at the facility and they will even be able to rehearse patient specific procedures through 3-D printing.
Patient safety is her passion. In fact, she’s not only aiming to train hospital staff, but new parents and caregivers.
“Our goal is to actually bring the parents who have a child with a medical complexity to the simulation center in a home like environment that’s part of that new space,” she explained. The training will also eventually extend to EMS providers and the military as a patient safety tool city wide.
The new 10,000 sq ft simuatlion facitily is being designed and built at the hosptial’s new research building in St. Petersburg.
If you are curious if the TLC show will continue filming now that her family has made the move to the Tampa Bay area, we can tell you YES!
She previously served as the medical director of simulation at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, Texas.
