Victoria blinks, breathes, talks, and bleeds, just like you. Not terribly impressive stuff—except that she’s a robot.

Nursing students at the MGH Institute of Health Professions use Victoria to practice, as realistically as possible, how to guide mother and child through birth. Just like human mothers, Victoria’s deliveries don’t always go as planned. Sometimes she has complications. Sometimes she hemorrhages fake blood, via a tank on her hips. Sometimes her baby isn’t breathing. And just like practicing nurses, students have to confront those problems head-on.

“It makes it so much more real when it bleeds a little bit, and out comes the head, and then she hemorrhages,” says assistant professor of nursing Mimi Pomerleau. “You learn so much when you’re confronted with having to do it. You can understand it, conceptually, but when you’re actually there doing and thinking in the moment, that’s when things really begin to click.”

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