Ruth Lee Ltd is a leading manufacturer of specialist training manikins for the healthcare sector, with more than 25 years’ experience in creating manikins for rescue and safety professionals.

As winner of the Queen’s Award for International Trade, the company’s products are used worldwide to improve the quality and safety of training and are available through a strong network of distributors in over 40 countries. The manikins are used by professionals and volunteer teams for all kinds of applications including safe patient handling, evacuation training, CPR/AWM, bariatrics, and water rescue, including a world-first high-fidelity manikin to train the rescue and resuscitation of a drowned casualty.

The Patient Handling Manikin is a revolutionary training tool which allows nurses, occupational therapists, and other medical professionals to train for safer, care-centric patient handling practises. During the Covid Pandemic, healthcare professionals needed a solution to continue with essential training, whilst still maintaining the mandatory social distancing. Ruth Lee manikins were the optimum solution. Staff who had previously championed the use of live ‘casualties’ for training had come to see the many benefits of using a manikin instead!

Ruth Lee Ltd collaborated with the British National Health Service (NHS), and specialist moving and handling organisations in North America to ensure that the Patient Handling manikin provided the best possible ‘patient’ for this kind of training. This included a unique amputee feature, with detachable limbs – a scenario which is difficult to simulate in training, and which radically affects the dynamic of sling and hoist training. An added bonus is that the detachable limbs allow a trainer to manoeuvre the manikin single-handedly!

People come in all shapes and sizes! The range of manikins cover a wide range of weights and sizes from a 5KG baby through to full sized adults, including bariatric models, but most importantly, they have been designed and tested in collaboration with expert organisations to ensure that they provide the very best simulated casualties for effective training.

The bariatric range includes manikins at 90 kg ,180 kg and 260kg. Ruth Lee can also provide an innovative bariatric suit which can be fitted over any adult Ruth Lee manikin and filled with water, adding and additional 150kg to the patient. It is a very useful tool for evacuation training, letting hospital fire safety officials design effective strategies to safely evacuate an obese patient.

Every year, over 300,00 people drown globally – healthcare professionals, especially first responders, need to be able to train to resuscitate patients who could present with very severe respiratory problems including pulmonary oedema. The Advanced Water Rescue Manikin was designed in partnership with medical experts at Lifecast Body Simulation and is a world first for those involved in the rescue, resuscitation, and pre-hospital care of a drowned casualty.

Its unique, patent-pending technology allows trainers to create both submerged and immersed drowning scenarios to simulate a range of medical emergencies including foaming from the mouth. It is a true world-first when it comes to the management of a drowned casualty.