Fake patients: Real training

August 27, 2009 4:00 PM

Ivanhoe Broadcast News

Medical schools are going high-tech by using mechanical patients. The non-human patients are preparing future doctors to save lives.

Heart murmurs, heart attacks, collapsed lung are some of the scenarios medical students may face when they enter the clinical setting. A Johns Hopkins study, however, shows medical students do not receive enough training during the first two years of school to prepare them for clinical rotations in their third and fourth years of school.

The newest simulators are preparing medical students before they ever step foot in a hospital. These mechanical patients are giving future doctors a way to practice life-saving procedures before they are faced with real circumstances.

Background:

Previously, students in medical school learned their skills by the book and then had the opportunity to practice these skills on trained actors mimicking different medical conditions. These acting patients could not present sudden medical problems in their bodies, making the training for the students less applicable in real-life.

Electronic mannequins:

Florida State University's College of Medicine has implemented new technology to teach students how to handle unique medical conditions and identify emergency treatments. Their four robots, named Harvey, SimMan, Annie and iStan, can be controlled by professors to teach the students how to respond to a given situation.

Students learn where to place a stethoscope and what to listen for. They were expected to identify basic valve disorders using a stethoscope, blood pressure readings and other physiologic data. Faculty can make the mannequin resemble a condition such as an acute myocardial infarction with a ruptured valve, leaving it to the students to identify what they are hearing in the practice patient.

Faculty can also use a microphone from the next room to be the voice of the mannequin patient. Lessons are far broader than from an acting patient. The mannequins can be programmed to die, leaving it to the student to react. Students may be asked to go into the next room and share the news with the fake patient's "parents."

"The beauty of the simulation lab lies in the ability of the faculty to assign each patient a pathological condition," Shaila Siraj, second-year medical student at FSU, was quoted as saying.

Funding:

Dr. J. Ocie Harris, a former dean of the FSU College of Medicine, played a key role in making the mannequins a reality for the school. Harris approached Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare (TMH) about making a gift toward the school's cause. TMH donated $750,000 to the College of Medicine, which was matched by the state of Florida, totaling $1.5 million.

For more information, contact:

Doug Carlson

Public Affairs and Communications

Florida State University College of Medicine

Tallahassee, FL

(850) 645-1255

Doug.carlson@med.fsu.edu

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