Riley's perinatal simulation team knows "seconds matter"

When you are part of the team charged with protecting pregnant mothers and their unborn or just-born babies, Dr. Emily Cassell, an OBGYN at Riley, said "seconds matter."

"When there's an obstetric emergency, you have seconds, minutes to respond before you're seeing devastating outcomes in both the pregnant patient and the fetus," Dr. Cassell said.

For this reason, IU Health team members like Dr. Cassell and simulation educator Lisa Mayer are passionate about sharing knowledge with doctors, nurses, emergency medical staff, and respiratory therapists across the state.

"We have a perinatal simulation team that was started in 2010," Mayer explained. "So, for 16 years we've been traveling all over the state to maternity units, NICUs, and providing simulation-based medical education to doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists who take care of moms and babies. I think the experience that we bring is we see a lot of high-risk emergencies at Riley, and so the providers that we're seeing out in the community are always well-intentioned, they're passionate about the care that they give to their moms and babies, but we provide that experience and that expertise and give them opportunities that they don't get to see a lot of the time."

Dr. Cassell said that, fortunately, many hospitals that handle more low-risk situations do not see the same number of extremely vulnerable patients as our team at Riley.

"But when it happens, it's important to know how to jump in and work together as a team," Dr. Cassell said.

During the Trauma, Burn & Emergency Care Symposium 2026 presented by Riley Children's Health, the perinatal simulation team walked two groups of medical staff and first responders through a simulation experience involving a mother who was about to give birth at home.

"Unfortunately, in our state, we do have some high numbers of mortality, and every day we hear of another hospital that's closing their maternity services," Mayer said. "It's really unfortunate because there's a lot of moms who are pregnant that are showing up at hospitals and they don't have the proper training to take care of them anymore with the closing of maternity units. So we're just trying to make ourselves a strong presence at conferences like this with emergency providers and hospital and pre-hospital providers so that we can just give them some education so the next time they encounter a pregnant patient or a newborn baby, they have the skills they need to care for them."

Along with this type of scenario, the perinatal simulation team assists with lessons regarding hypertensive emergencies, postpartum hemorrhages, shoulder dystocias, and delivery of a preterm infant.

"You can't predict when an obstetric emergency is going to occur," Dr. Cassell said. "I think it's really critical that we're preparing everyone for the worst-case scenario."