Sula Marie

When you are retired, yet you wake up early planning how you can get home life duties out of the way so you can work on your project uninterrupted.

When you push pass lunch and now it's late and you're losing energy and are forced to pause and eat!

When your husband says "Are you still working" and it is now 2000.

When you finally sign off at 2100 because it's time to watch on CNN.

When you finally retire and lay there half the night and think about what you can do different to improve your product, promote it, make the stakeholders buy-in!

It's NOT a Hobby
It's My Passion

It became my brain child in 2002 when I started my career as a Dialysis Nurse after 15 years in Surgical Trauma ICU.

I'll never forget how nerve wrecking it was to have to manage the dialysis machine, the access, what looked like all the blood in the body on the outside and the rapidly changing conditions of the patients.

I kept thinking, there has got to be a safer and less stressful way to learn dialysis.

Well after 22 years in Dialysis, my brainchild was born.

3-in-1 Dialysis Simulator

Fresenius Medical Care DaVita Kidney Care USRenal Care

What problem does the 3-in-1 Dialysis Simulator solve? Where is the evidence of this?

3-in-1 Dialysis Simulator solves the critical gap in hands-on training for high-risk dialysis procedures—preparing hemodialysis/peritoneal catheters, running full sessions, AVG cannulation/securement, and machine troubleshooting—where live practice risks patient harm, complications, and access loss while inadequate training contributes to staff shortages and errors.

Key problems it addresses:

**High complication rates from poor skills**. AVG cannulation errors cause aneurysms (0.04/1000 patient-days), infections (0.11/1000), thrombosis (0.24/1000), and graft failures, often from repeated misses leading to pseudoaneurysms in >50% severe cases.

**Training shortages and steep learning curves**: Dialysis units face recruitment/retention issues due to inadequate structured programs with new staff struggling on setups, alarms, and transitions from lab to bedside.

**Patient safety risks in live training**: Limited deliberate practice on real patients heightens infiltration, hematomas, and access loss; simulators enable risk-free repetition for first-stick success up to 95%.

Evidence of Impact:

Industry studies confirm simulation reduces errors: Simulation-based training cuts AVF puncture complications (e.g., hematomas p=0.001, pain p=0.03) and boosts success rates (RR 1.08, moderate evidence across 866 learners).

Vascular access gaps persist: Dialysis nurses/PCTs show knowledge-to-skill transition failures in assessment/cannulation, needing active sim strategies for bedside confidence.

Thank you VoyageHouston for shining the Spot Light on how my 3-in-1 Dialysis Simulator invention is bridging the gap between knowledge and practice in Dialysis Education!

Rising Stars: Meet Sula Stanfield of Northwest Houston Today we’d like to introduce you to Sula Stanfield. Hi Sula, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.As far back as I can remember, I’ve been wired to spot gaps and build the bridge that didn’t exist yet. Entrepreneurship was never a side interest—it was...