Students at the University of Arizona’s College of Medicine — Phoenix have the opportunity to practice realistic medical procedures on lifelike mannequins as part of the Arizona Center for Simulation and Experiential Learning.
Finished in 2012 and housed on campus in the Health Sciences Education Building, the simulation center is an attempt to improve both health care education and patient safety, center manager James Rinehart said. It has already started to be incorporated into various aspects of the medical college’s curriculum. He said students’ early exposure to simulation technology improves their learning process.
“It’s really becoming the standard in medical education. You need to have simulation,” Rinehart said. “If you don’t have (a simulation aspect), you’re not providing a good curriculum.”
The center features mannequins of many types. Some are smaller and allow students to practice a variety of medical operations from simple stitches to more complex incisions. Full body mannequins allow students to further apply their skills in a more lifelike setting.
This is a marked departure from classic clinical training, said Dr. Teresa Wu, a faculty member at the medical school.
“When we trained as physicians more than a decade ago, we learned how to do things on live patients,” Wu said. “The first time you were doing a procedure, it was often times on a live patient.”
As an emergency physician at the Maricopa Integrated Health System, Wu acknowledges the practical benefits of simulations centers. For her, the uses extend beyond just the education of medical school students as she also uses the center to help teach practicing physicians.
The center features some of the most advanced technology in medical simulation, Rinehart and Wu said. Some of the mannequins have pulses and speakers that allow professors to communicate with students as if they were the patients, Rinehart said. This allows students to develop their interpersonal skills as they communicate with the fake “patients.” Each simulation experience is unique because professors can manipulate variables ranging from pulse rate to oxygen levels.
Students will often enter simulation experiences in groups that feature members across different medical disciplines. This encourages them to build their ability to work in teams, which is a realistic aspect of a professional setting, Wu and Rinehart said.
Students will receive real time feedback both from the mannequins and their professors. After the simulations, professors hold “debriefing sessions” and go over students’ mistakes and other details about the operation.
“The concept of simulation allows us to put our students and learners into an environment where they can practice all these skills in a no-risk environment,” Wu said. “It’s a safe learning environment when they … can make mistakes and learn from those mistakes without hurting a patient.”
Christian Dameff, a fourth-year medical student, only has two years of experience with simulation technology. Despite that, he agreed with Wu on the benefits of training in the simulation center.
“It lets students practice things on mannequins in a risk-free environment before they interact with patients and do that on real people,” he said. “It’s better for the patients, it’s better for the students. It also allows us to explore complex scenarios that you can’t write a test question for.”
While Dameff only had the opportunity to use the simulation center in his third and fourth years, first-years coming into the medical college will be thrown straight into simulation experiences. Rinehart said every course has at least one simulation experience and the college is constantly looking for new ways to integrate the technology into the curriculum. Wu said the college is working toward having a simulation component in each of its specializations.
The idea of simulation in medicine is not unique to the University of Arizona. Medical colleges such as the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Harvard University Medical School have their own simulation centers and many hospitals have them as well. In the end, the consensus throughout the medical field is that simulation technology will benefit both patients and medical professionals, according to both Dameff and Rinehart.
But what sets the University of Arizona’s simulation center apart is the overall experience, Dameff said.
“This simulation center does a great job of simulating the patient environment,” he said. “The rooms look like patient rooms, they look like hospital rooms and they look like surgical operating rooms. That’s really important because that’s the environment you’re going to be practicing in.”
Wu said the simulation center’s dedication to staying ahead of technological trends in the medical world also separates it from other centers like it.
For example, the incorporation of ultrasound technology in University of Arizona’s curriculum mimics the general trend in the medical community, she said.
“Every specialty in medicine is starting to use ultrasound,” she said. “It’s become a standard of care.”
The simulation centers have an intertwined relationship between the professional and educational worlds when outside organizations use the centers. For example, Rinehart said their center is being used to train Air Evacuation personnel.
He also said he sees a future in which doctors will have simulation as a means for sharpening skills and improving competency in various medical tasks.
Contact the reporter at agnel.philip@asu.edu
