Medical Training using Simulators

Abstract

Training and education using simulation has been used extensively in many high risk industries including aviation, nuclear power, military and rail. Repeated exposure to simulated crises and events has meant that, for example, airline crews are well prepared to face a rare disaster when it happens in real life. The use of simulation and simulators in medicine, to train and educate healthcare professionals has gained increasing attention in recent years and many simulation centres have now been set up in the UK. The Bristol Medical Simulation Centre, which opened in 1997, was the first training centre of its kind in the UK. There are now over 70 similar centres in the UK and many more with manikins in simpler settings, and hundreds of centres throughout the world [Department of Health 2010]. These offer a similar concept to that which the high risk industries use, where training for medical emergencies using sophisticated manikins are used in realistic medical settings, and task trainers are used to teach, for example, practical surgical skills. Many potential accidents in medicine are due to human error and communication problems [(Kohn et al. 1999, Department of Health 2009)]. Simulators can help train teams to function optimally using human factors style teaching. Simulation could also be a practical solution to several current educational issues. These include the challenges faced by educational institutions in securing clinical placements, the decrease in social acceptance of trainees learning on patients, the drive to maximise patient safety, and the dramatic decrease in training time being available to junior doctors due to the reduction in hours through the European Working Time Directive. The simulations centres consist of a number of different designated rooms. Simulated operations and team training can be carried out in the operating room. This room is made as close as possible to the modern operating room. It contains real equipment such as ventilators, defibrillators, patient monitors, trolleys and drip stands. A control room is next to the operating room, with a one way viewing window. This is where the manikin is controlled and where the simulation training is viewed and video recorded.