Laerdal: Helping Save Lives, From Resusci Anne to Today 

WorldPoint Blog

 
Clinical student practicing intubation on a Laerdal Resusci Anne manikin
August 11, 2021 43 view(s)

Laerdal: Helping Save Lives, From Resusci Anne to Today 

If you work in the realm of resuscitation, it is likely that you have heard of Laerdal! Established in 1940, Laerdal began its journey as a toy company, specializing in plastics like the Tomte toy car and the Anne doll. Laerdal’s pioneering work with soft plastics was sought out by Dr. Bjorn Lind and Dr. Peter Safar who needed a lifelike manikin to train a new concept of mouth-to-mouth ventilation, eventually resulting in the first iteration of the Laerdal Resusci Anne manikin in the 1960s. Today, more than 300 million people have been trained in CPR using Resusci Anne! 

Laerdal Medical, a leader in healthcare simulation, has since expanded their portfolio, helping advance resuscitation and patient care worldwide. WorldPoint is a proud partner to and distributor for Laerdal, bringing their high-quality, durable, and realistic manikins and trainers to lay-responders, nurses, EMS teams, law enforcement, and other healthcare professionals around the world. Plus, we are currently offering top Laerdal products – like Resusci Anne QCPR AED Airway, MegaCode Kelly, and more – ON SALE! Read more to learn about how Laerdal products can help you enhance your training! 

The Story Behind Laerdal 

If you have learned, taught, or trained CPR, you have certainly heard of Resusci Anne, and likely have given her compressions and rescue breaths… But do you know the story behind her face?  

In the late 1800s, the body of a young woman was pulled from the Seine in Paris. The young woman’s face – with a soft smile – became the fascination of a pathologist, who cast a mold from it. In the late 1950’s, a member of the American Heart Association’s new CPR Committee, Archer Gordon, realized that a CPR dummy (or CPR model) could help medical student’s practice the lifesaving techniques. To bring his idea to life, he enlisted the help of a colleague and toymaker Asmund Laerdal.  Having seen a replica of the "L'Inconnue de la Seine" on the wall of a friend or relatives house, Asmund Laerdal decided to give the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation doll that same face. Thus, Resusci Anne was born.  

Click here to read more about the story! 

Laerdal Resuci Anne through the years.

Resusci Anne has clearly changed along with the science, and now has a multitude of new, additional features that set itself apart from the original doll made in the 1960’s, and according to Laerdal staff, “Resusci Anne has and always will be an evolving product.” The Laerdal Foundation was established to support research and best practices as well as practical implementations in acute medicine. To date, this foundation has supported 1,800 international research projects with more than $40 million in funding. As more is learned about what it takes to save a life, Laerdal ensures their products reflect those key metrics! A great example that you are likely aware of if you are in the Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) community, is the QCPR feedback added to Resusci Anne (and Little Anne) in recent years! This QCPR technology allows learners to track their exact compression and ventilation data to measure and improve.  

Resusci Anne, described as a kind of “Build A Bear” of manikins, is truly modular; the customer can really customize Resusci Anne to their training objectives! If you are a CPR instructor who currently owns or is interested in a Resusci Anne, but you also want to teach Stop the Bleed courses – look no further! You can easily offer both courses with 1 manikin by adding the bleeding leg option, saving you time learning a new manikin, space, and money. Especially helpful for customers with limited budgets or planned expanded training, you can purchase the feature set that you can afford now, and plan to expand your training as the need or money comes along! 

Favorite “modules” or add-ons to Resusci Anne include IV arms and Bleeding Control Legs, and Airway heads. Perfect for advanced healthcare providers, paramedics, EMS/Fire, law enforcement, and nurses, there are many options when you purchase your manikin as well as additional features you can add in, so you can truly “build” your own manikin to fit your training!  

In addition to Resusci Anne and the many modular add-ons, Laerdal provides a wide range of other healthcare training products, including Bag-Valve Mask (BVM) Resuscitators, Airway Management Trainers (AMT), Advanced Life Support (ALS) Manikins, and much more.  

Helping Save Lives through Innovation 

From the beginning, Laerdal has worked alongside doctors, nurses, educators, researchers, and industry-leading organizations to create durable, educationally effective healthcare training products. Healthcare simulation in training helps reduce preventable medical errors and improves patient outcomes. As a leader in patient simulation, Laerdal Medical continues to develop timely and innovative solutions for a wide range of healthcare training. 

Alongside Laerdal’s expansion into different markets, their focus has remained on saving lives – whether it is through CPR training, or through helping save lives of mothers and newborns in low-income countries. Laerdal’s mission, Helping Save Lives, truly encompasses what they are all about. Their vision: “No one should die or be disabled unnecessarily during birth or from sudden illness, trauma, or medical errors.” Their use of evidence-based knowledge helps them develop and continually refine their product and service solutions; when you buy a Laerdal product, you know you are buying one of the best! 

WorldPoint: Bringing Laerdal's High-Quality Products to You

WorldPoint is a proud partner to and distributor for Laerdal, bringing their high-quality CPR and simulation products to CPR, medical, healthcare, and EMS professionals around the world. We are proud to offer TOP Laerdal products ON SALE for a limited time only – sale ends 9/3/2021! 

Save BIG on select Little Anne QCPR and Little Baby QCPR 4 Packs, Resusci Anne QCPR, Airway Management Trainers, BVMs, MegaCode Kelly™ Advanced, and more! 

Click here to shop all Laerdal items on sale now! 

Have any questions? 

Chat with us on our website, www.worldpoint.com, send us an email at customersolutions@worldpoint.com, or give us a call at 888-322-8350.   

We are WorldPoint. And we are at the heart of your training.    

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