What is medical simulation?

Why use medical simulation?

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Why should you use medical simulation?

Currently, there are hundreds of schools in the United States providing "hands on" health care education to medical, nursing, and allied health students. These schools predominately use the apprenticeship model as its main teaching style, often referred to in medicine as "do one, see one, teach one."

Until recently, practicing on cadavers, laboratory animals, or real patients has been the only way to teach doctors, nurses, and other health professionals about anatomy and how to practice medicine.

Of course, using anesthetized animals for medical training is challenging - the animals do not have the correct anatomy for realistic training, they are expensive, and they are not reusable.

While cadavers have the correct anatomy, their use presents other challenges, including expense, difficulty in procuring the cadaver, and tissue degradation. In both instances, ethical issues are raised as well.

A health care provider's ability to react prudently in an unexpected situation is one of the most critical factors in creating a positive outcome in a medical emergency, regardless of whether it occurs on the battlefield, freeway, or hospital emergency room. This ability, however, is not a skill that one is born with, but rather it is learned and developed with time, training, practice, and repetition.

Today, advances in technology have created new and better, methods for teaching the practice of medicine and reinforcing best practices. One of the most exciting innovations in health care is in the field of medical simulation.

Employing medical simulation techniques can help move medicine from the old "see one, do one, teach one" method to a "see one, practice many, do one" model for success.

Consider these facts -

• Medical errors kill as many as 98,000 people annually at a total national cost of between $37 to $50 billion for adverse events and between $17 to $29 billion for preventable adverse events. Institute of Medicine
  
  
• Nursing shortages, which are expected to reach 20% by the year 2020, are forcing some health care facilities to implement mandatory overtime for nurses and increased patient care loads, contributing to an already high number of stress related errors.
  
  
• Bioterrorism threats and concerns are forcing institutions and governments to reconsider how quickly providers can be trained and ready to react to a health crisis.
  
  
• Reserve troops are deployed into combat situations with insufficient time and resources to prepare them to provide medical care in battlefield conditions.
  
  
• Medical residents are operating under strict new rules that limit them to an 80-hour work week leaving less time for direct interactions between students and instructors.