Virtual Ventilator: a Win32 application to teach the principles of mechanical ventilation

Abstract

Instruction within the veterinary curriculum in many disciplines has traditionally relied upon use of animal intensive laboratories to teach the effects of a technique, procedure or treatment on a living patient. Due to concerns raised about live animal usage in teaching, many veterinary training programs have introduced static models or mannequins into their curricula to facilitate teaching the mechanics of a task such as suturing a wound. Such models, while valuable, provide little feedback to the student as to how poorly the wound will heal if sutured improperly. The practice of clinical anesthesia is in large part concerned with feed back. The response of the patient to anesthetic drugs and techniques dictates how the drugs and techniques will be applied to the individual patient. A static model may suffice when teaching the technique of endotracheal intubation, but clearly ‘patient’ response is invaluable when teaching how one should respond to inadequate ventilation. The Virtual Ventilator (RD Keegan, Moscow, ID, USA) application attempts to combine the simplicity of a static model with user feed back to provide the student a realistic model/simulation of connecting patient to a mechanical ventilator. Virtual Ventilator is a 32-bit application designed for a PC running either Windows 95, 98 or NT (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, USA). The Virtual Ventilator main screen depicts a ventilator bellows, several ventilator controls that are manipulated using the mouse and several digital/analog displays. The student adjusts ventilator settings using the controls while the displays and the position and movement of the bellows provide feedback as to the effects the chosen ventilator settings are having on the patient and on the ventilator itself. A split window permits viewing the patient's capnograph concurrently with the ventilator settings. Student evaluations have indicated that the application has been useful as a training tool to facilitate subsequent live animal anesthesia laboratories using mechanical ventilation.