A respiration trace that actually breathes
Most training monitors draw a perfect sine wave. The Patient Simulator's respiration trace has the small imperfections real chest electrodes pick up, so trainees learn to read a waveform instead of memorizing a shape.
Why a clean sine wave is the wrong training tool
A textbook respiration curve is smooth and identical from breath to breath. A real one isn't. Chest impedance monitoring picks up a person's actual mechanics: one breath a little deeper than the last, a slightly different shape depending on how the patient is positioned, and a faint ripple from the heartbeat riding on top of the trace, because the electrodes measuring chest movement can't fully separate it from the pulse underneath. The Patient Simulator's respiration generator reproduces all of that instead of a single repeating template, so the waveform your trainees see on the tablet looks like the one they'll meet on a real ward.
Built-in variability, not random noise
Every breath gets its own length and depth, nudged slightly from the last one. Occasional sighs break the rhythm. The baseline drifts slowly, the way skin contact and posture drift over a long shift. There's even a "talking" artifact: a shallow, choppy pattern that fades in over about seven tenths of a second rather than switching on like a light, because that's how it looks when a patient starts talking mid-monitoring in real life.
A rate that changes without the trace jumping
The respiratory rate on the monitor jitters slightly every couple of seconds, the same small variation a real patient's rate has. Underneath, the waveform's phase is tracked continuously rather than recalculated from the clock on every frame, which matters, because recalculating from scratch would make the curve visibly jump every time the rate shifts. Integrating it instead keeps the line smooth through every change the instructor makes.
What happens in cardiac arrest
Even in a pulseless rhythm, the chest impedance line doesn't fall dead flat. A real patient's electrodes keep picking up motion and handling artifact whether or not the patient is breathing, and the Patient Simulator reflects that rather than drawing a suspiciously perfect flatline.
Paired with capnography, not disconnected from it
The same breath-timing engine that draws this trace also drives the EtCO2 waveform, so the two never fall out of step. A patient can't inhale on one monitor and exhale on another, and neither can this one.
How to count the rate by hand, and when not to trust the number on the monitor, is in how to measure respiratory rate.
Frequently asked questions
How do I set the respiratory rate?
With the RR slider on the controller, from 0 to 60 breaths a minute. The number on the monitor wanders by a breath or so every few seconds, like a real patient's.
Why isn't the trace perfectly regular?
On purpose. Each breath gets its own length and depth, with occasional sighs, slow baseline drift and now and then a talking artifact, because that is what a real impedance trace looks like.
What happens to respiration in cardiac arrest?
The rate reads 0 and the trace sits on the baseline with only a little electrode noise, rather than a perfectly flat line.
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