High-tech mannequins will help med students study
By Timothy Roberts |
Medical students at the new Texas Tech University Paul L. Foster School of Medicine won’t have to wait until their third year to actually work on patients, but the patients they get will be indestructible.
You might call them dummies, mannequins or million-dollar men or women, or you can call them High-Fidelity Human Patient Simulators, which is their proper name.
They talk, they blink, the women give birth. And their doctors can practice on them before they get anywhere near a live patient.
“Instead of waiting until year three or four, when they have direct patient encounters, we can simulate it,” says Dr. Hoi Ho, associate dean and the director of the Clinical Skills and Clinic Simulation Center. “It’s a controlled environment. No one will get hurt, although the scenario can go very bad. The simulator could die.”
The mannequins and related equipment cost $7 million, says Dr. Ralitsa Akins, the center’s associate director. That doesn’t include the cost of maintenance and reprogramming “because things change,” she said.
Over the last 30 years, Texas Tech med students spent their first two years studying at the main campus in Lubbock and then had an opportunity to transfer to El Paso for the final two years.
Beginning next month, students can study in El Paso for their entire four-year program. Classes begin July 13.
Teach one
In medical training there is the process known as “see one, do one, teach one.” A med student gets to see a process done once, gets to participate once and then is expected to be able to do it on his or her own. This may explain a certain number of bruised arms after flu shots.
In Texas Tech’s Clinical Simulation Center, medical students get to practice on life-like dummies. In one lab a student can practice endoscopy repeatedly without causing any wear and tear on the patient. Dr. Ho demonstrated the process at an open house June 1, where area hospital executives and medical staffs saw the kind of training the med students would receive.
The effect can be rather chilling. A mannequin patient may suddenly cry out, or, if asked, will tell you he is not feeling well. His eyes blink with a mechanical clink. A woman in childbirth expresses the pain she is feeling — or would be if she weren’t a mannequin. A newborn caught in its umbilical cord will turn blue.
From another room, a professor watches as students interview live people posing as patients, then evaluates the questions and the questioner. The session’s sights and sounds are recorded for later analysis.
“The first thing in medicine is to listen,” says Dr. Ho. “We know that on average a doctor listens for only 22 seconds before interrupting the patient — because they don’t have time. We want them to become a person who listens well and understands the patient’s concerns.”
The simulation center is part of the new medical school, named for its benefactor, Paul Foster, chairman/CEO of Western Refining in El Paso, whose gift of $50 million is the largest ever received by Texas Tech.
Cynthia Rivera, chief of staff of the El Paso VA Health Care System and a Texas Tech grad, came to the open house.
“This is a tremendous improvement over the old method,” she says. “For a medical student to first draw blood, to enter the body, if you will, can be very traumatic for that medical student. This takes away all that. They practice, they get feedback, and they improve their skills to where they are actually ready to go in there and work with the patients.”
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