New Center at Weill Cornell Trains Doctors of Tomorrow
An edgy emergency-room staff huddles around an unresponsive heart attack victim. The patient's heart flat-lines, slashing the tense hush with the heart monitor's dreaded squeal. "Clear!" shouts one doctor, applying the defibrillator paddles. After a rush of electricity, the hush returns as all in the room strain to detect the sign of a pulse. The next few moments last an eternity, then the welcomed "beep...beep...beep" from the heart monitor. Relief floods the room. The patient will survive.Would have survived, that is, if the patient were ever actually alive.
This was just a simulation at Weill Cornell Medical College's Clinical Skills Center. At the Center, in the newly opened Weill Greenberg Center, medical students are learning how to handle virtual situations just like these before they face them as real doctors. Hands-on practice in realistic, yet non-life-or-death settings, is an advantage that only simulation training offers. (View Slideshow)
"Everybody needs training at their job, especially doctors," says Dr. Yoon Kang, director of the Clinical Skills Center and assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College.
At the Clinical Skills Center, different areas of the facility focus on particular clinical situations, each presenting its own set of challenges. For example, recently in the exam room suite, first-year students practiced history-taking – interviewing patients about their background and lifestyle.
In exam rooms – exact replicas of a typical doctor's office – students meet with patient-actors, lay people who have been trained to accurately portray clinical topics. These interactions allow students the opportunity to practice simple information-gathering from a patient in a thorough, comfortable and confidence-inspiring way.
"The Clinical Skills Center provides an amazing opportunity for student education," says Anuj Mehta, a fourth-year medical student at Weill Cornell. "It offers a safe environment for students to become accustomed to patients and practice their interviewing and physical exam skills. With constructive feedback, we as students feel much more comfortable when we translate these skills from patient-actors to real patients in the hospital."
Another area of the Clinical Skills Center space offers an opportunity to practice other types of clinical situations. In the simulation suite, a computerized mannequin displays how the human body behaves under various health conditions, and how it reacts to medical intervention.
Instructors craft a scenario, an asthma attack, for example, programming the signs and symptoms into the mannequin's computer. The mannequin then becomes a patient undergoing an asthma attack.
"This simulator is a very high-tech model," notes Dr. Kang. "The simulator has a pulse, heart sounds, breath sounds, eyes that react appropriately to light." The students then "treat" the mannequin/patient and the simulator responds in a physiologically correct way to medical maneuvers.
A student "medicates" the mannequin by scanning the medicine's bar code into the computer. The changing vital signs appear on a large flat-screen monitor on the wall.
Furthermore, during any scenario using the mannequin, a faculty instructor observing through a two-way mirror in the control room can adjust the patient's clinical status at any point, changing the scenario in real time, mimicking real-life emergent situations.
"We can immerse learners at all levels of medical training – first-year students to practicing physicians – in real cases and emergencies, but in a safe, controlled environment," says Dr. Kang. "In fact, we can take any one scenario and alter it, making it clinically more or less difficult depending on the level of the learner."
The Center also has conference rooms where instructors and students can view any session in real time, or afterwards on videotape. Critiquing a scenario can hone a variety of skills that students need to be good doctors. "One of the most unique and important features of the Clinical Skills Center is the capability for faculty members to directly observe student-patient interactions and provide immediate feedback," notes Dr. Kang.
"I am proud that our Hospital is using the most advanced technology to better train the doctors of the future," says Dr. Antonio M. Gotto Jr., dean of Weill Cornell Medical College. "Embracing such technological advancements in education benefits both doctors and patients."
For media inquiries please contact Andrew Klein at 212-821-0560 or ank2017@med.cornell.edu
