It’s a complicated simulation with some challenging moments – as in real life. By the end of the afternoon, the medical officers we were teaching were so much better at running this simulated situation which is more familiar to them in Varanasi unfortunately than we see in the UK. Questions like “when do we stop resuscitating if the heart rate is still not audible and we’ve given 2 rounds of adrenaline?” and “what do we do when the baby is still fitting after glucose and 3 anticonvulsants?” led to long reflective discussions with – I hope – some sort of therapeutic tinge to them. These medical officers are called to the baby when all is not well at delivery, and often they are too late to help the baby. It was uncomfortable for some of them to think about cases they had been involved in. By the end of the course a few of them had some good ideas about how to better support and train the birth attendants and the importance of multidisciplinary team working in an emergency.
