CHEO and CMU work together to craft realistic training prosthetics for medical professionals

Neil Morrill SPFX Makeup Artist and CMU instructor putting on the finishing paint touches

CHEO, formerly known as The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario is a global leader in pediatric health care providing world-class compas­sionate care and leading-edge treatment for children and youth. The work that CHEO does is inspiring and ground­breaking; constantly innovat­ing within the medical field to improve the lives of the patients they care for. Medical training insti­tutions are challenged with creating realistic simulations that allow for medical profes­sionals to receive the training and practice they need to bring new skills into the med­ical field. It can be difficult to replicate injuries, burns, and illnesses that are lifelike for these training simulations. En­ter, CMU College of Makeup Art & Design-CMU Instruc­tors and the community that surrounds them is comprised of the top trained prosthet­ic artists in the world. While the prosthetics work these artists create is normally left for the movie industry, there is a growing crossover between medicine and film prosthetics and CMU College is proud to be apart of this development.

Both the medical and film industry utilize the same process to create a prosthetic appliance, whether it be for a new nose on an actor or a new nose on a real patient. While the application process and permanency of the noses may be drastically different, the art, detail, and materials that go into creating the appliance are the same. The artistry behind prosthetics can be extremely helpful when it comes to creating those realis­tic simulations previously men­tioned. Prosthetic Makeup Art­ist and former CMU instructor, Neil Morrill- who is known for his work on films such as Sui­cide Squad, It, Hannibal and The Strain (to name a few), was brought on to this project by CMU College. Utilizing the skills Neil has as a renowned artist, he used medical reference images to create realistic pieces that represent different injuries, illnesses, and burns. With the simulation child doll, CHEO provided to CMU College and the work of some recent alumni, Neil and the team were able to create moulds of the doll to help with making the prosthetic pieces. The finished product is a suit that showcases various injuries that can be fitted to the doll. If needed for the simulation, a little gel and fake blood can be added to the suit making this training resource that much more realistic. The doll will be used to help medi­cal professionals working for CHEO be prepared for an ar­ray of different situations that can show up in the hospital.

This is not the first time CMU College has crossed over into the medical field. Previ­ously CMU custom-designed a one-week program for Ontar­io’s air ambulance service ornge. The paramedics that work for ornge serve on the front line of emergencies, thus they need to be fully prepared to handle the worst-case sce­nario when they arrive on the scene. In consultation with ornge, CMU College created a number of commonly found injuries and taught the trainers how to create realistic simulat­ed accident environments. This way the paramedics that are first on the scene are able to evalu­ate the severity of the injuries and act accordingly as they will have received ample training in the simulated envi­ronment.

CMU College is proud to lend our world-class artists to institutions such as the Chil­dren’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and ornge. To be apart of innovation in any form is always rewarding but espe­cially when it can help to benefit the lives of the sick or injured. A special thank you to the wonderfully talented Prosthetic Makeup Artist, Neil Morrill and to the exceptionally trained Alumni of CMU Col­lege that helped to make this project come to life.