Manikin
A manikin is a full or partial body patient simulator, built to human scale, that learners can examine and treat as if it were a patient. Manikins range from static models used for positioning and CPR through to software-driven units that produce palpable pulses, breath sounds, and monitor waveforms. The Healthcare Simulation Dictionary treats manikin as the primary spelling and mannequin as a variant of the same word.
Programs buy manikins to make physical care visible. A resident can feel a pulse disappear, watch a rhythm change on the monitor, and see whether the team started compressions in time, and none of that happens with a slide deck or a written case. That is why the manikin sits at the center of most code, airway, and crisis resource management curricula.
The limit shows up the moment the learning objective moves from the body to the conversation. A manikin can deteriorate on cue, but it cannot hold a resident's gaze, ask what the scan means, or fall silent after hearing that treatment is not working. Programs that try to teach goals of care around a manikin usually end up with faculty speaking for the patient from the control room, which learners read as a script rather than a person.
Fidelity language causes most of the confusion here. High fidelity is a property of the whole simulation and not of the hardware, so a manikin with every function switched on can still produce a low fidelity encounter if the scenario, the environment, and the debriefing do not hold up. Buying a more capable manikin does not raise fidelity on its own, and program budgets get spent on equipment when the real gap was in scenario design.
Manikins also carry an operating cost that programs underestimate: warranty and service contracts, a simulation technologist to program and maintain them, moulage supplies, and the room they sit in. Simulation center directors who track utilization often find that the manikin runs only a handful of days each month, because faculty schedules rather than hardware set the ceiling on how much practice each learner gets.
What this looks like in a program
- A pediatric critical care fellowship runs its resuscitation curriculum on a manikin, then moves the family update that follows the resuscitation to a standardized patient or an AI patient, because the two objectives need different modalities.
- Simulation technologists rather than faculty own manikin programming and maintenance in most accredited centers, and losing that role is usually what takes a manikin out of service.
- Hybrid setups affix a task trainer to a live person so learners perform the procedure and talk with the patient in the same encounter, which a manikin alone cannot support.
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Last updated August 2026