Medical campus gets patient simulators

UT students, faculty and community members gathered on the Health Science Campus on Thursday for "The Future of Healthcare Education," an eight-hour event dedicated to medical simulators.

Several rooms in the HSC Collier Building showcased a number of simulators including Chris, Pat and Jamie — three human patient simulators that are lifelike in both size and appearance.

"We can simulate almost any situation in medicine," said Executive Director for Clinical Simulation on the Health Science Campus Pamela Boyers.

The human patient simulators, which have different functions, including pediatric and surgical training, are used to practice procedures and allow medical students to gain realistic experience without practicing on real patients.

"One of the things we have to think of when training health professionals is patient safety," Boyers said.

The human simulators allow students to practice risky surgeries more than once and allow room for beginners' mistakes, said Administrative Director at the Center for Medical Education and Innovation in Columbus, Ohio Ben Stobbe.

"The nice thing about it is that if a patient dies in simulation, the simulation can be rebooted," Stobbe said. "You can't reboot a real person."

Stobbe said the most advanced of the three human patient simulators, Jamie, is capable of recreating about 72,000 physical responses, providing a broad range of symptoms and conditions for students in many disciplines to diagnose and treat.

"It's the closest thing you'll get to a real patient with a simulator," he said.

Jamie has human needs such as breathing in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide, which allows students to work with respiratory problems such as oxygen deprivation during surgery.

Jamie will join the other simulators, Chris and Pat, which have been in use since December, said Patricia Munier, an administrative assistant on the HSC.

One of the simulators is portable and wireless and is capable of simulating cyanosis, a critical condition in which a patient's fingernail beds turn blue if deprived of oxygen.

The third human patient simulator, which is child-sized, teaches students to "adjust their thinking to a child's needs," Stobbe said.

The simulator requires different needles, tools and doses of medication than an adult simulator and reacts to each, which teaches students the difference between speaking to an adult patient and speaking to a child patient, Stobbe said.

All three simulators were part of the opening of Phase II of the Interprofessional Immersive Simulation Center, the dedication of 12,000 square feet of space to expand the current simulation program at UT.

The center, which will be located in the basement of the HSC Collier Building, will allow students and faculty to train with the three human patient simulators as well as other simulators including the robotic EMC, said Systems Analyst for the Center for Creative Instruction Ted Ronau.

EMC is an artificial intelligence robot capable of many speech-based functions, which was also showcased at the simulation event and was originally created to impress prospective students, Ronau said.

"We wanted to do something different, something that none of the other universities have," Ronau said.

EMC has a screen that displays the image of a human man and talks to prospective students about the University of Toledo.

Ronau said EMC has not been in use recently because of improvements in the computer program, but may soon join panels to which prospective students speak.

EMC can be visited in the admissions office in Rocket Hall, according to the UT Center for Creative Instruction Web site.

The dedication was meant to introduce faculty and staff at the UT Medical Center to simulation and collaboration of interdisciplinary care, Stobbe said.

Though the Phase II center is located in an area used mainly by nursing students at UT, the center will be open to all members of the UT medical community, Boyers said.

"It's not just about teaching students how to do procedures, it's about communication," Boyers said.

The third and final phase of the project is a proposed three-story building for simulation training, which will include immersion rooms on the first floor, a simulation center on the second floor and an anatomy lab on the third floor.

Stobbe said building a simulation center at UT is a great opportunity for interdisciplinary study, because it can encompass learning for almost every department.

"It truly is a multidisciplinary training center," he said.