Latest Clinical Simulation News From Around the World | February 2022
Helping healthcare simulation educators, administrators, and learners to stay up-to-date on industry topics, HealthySimulation.com finds and shares relevant news and information from around the world. This news includes medical simulation innovations, center development, products, vendor information, research, and more. Together, these industry updates help paint pictures of where the healthcare simulation industry is presently, and where the industry is headed as the scope of clinical simulation practice expands. Below are some of the world’s latest clinical simulation updates as of February 2022.
Research Demonstrates How Active Listening Impacts Employee’s
MacEwan University’s Dr. Tiffany Kriz (in collaboration with researchers from Penn State and the University of Central Florida) released a new study that examined how managers’ active listening relates to their employees’ sense of job insecurity during difficult times. The article shares that “good listeners connect with speakers in a way that allows them to feel safe engaging in self-exploration.” This means that an increase (decrease) in active listening from one’s manager should facilitate a dynamic coping process by strengthening (diminishing) perceived control. Overall, the research suggests that an increase in active listening may have a ripple effect in increasing perceived control and decreasing affective job insecurity.
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5 Reasons to Consider Simulation to Mitigate Risk
This article, published by Laerdal Medical, shares how those who manage risk need constant vigilance and continuous improvement. Further, new tools now exist to better identify and predict when and where risk will occur—on a micro-scale. Using these tools, healthcare simulation leaders can work to reduce the negative impact that risk can have on patient outcomes as well as financial matters. Laerdal provides five specific ways simulation can make a difference, and why to consider them as a means of mitigating risk within an organization.
Simulation Shows How Blood Flows Through the Heart
A mechanical engineer from Rice University, Tayfun Tezduyar, reported that visualizations can help clinicians understand the mechanisms that push blood through the body and fix things when they go awry. He and his team found a way to accurately characterize the flow of blood around and through the heart’s valves, taking into account the flow details near the surfaces of the valve’s three leaflets along the way. According to Rice University, the stunning simulation of a working ventricle-valve-aorta represents calculations first presented by Tezduyar and his Waseda colleagues in 2020. The animation below shows two views of the ventricle-valve-aorta, top, and side, and reveals in great detail how the ventricle fills with blood, how quickly the three-leaf valve opens to relieve the pressure, and the turbulent flow of blood when it pushes through.
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Cambridge, GigXR Launch XR HoloPatient Trainer
GigXR, a global provider of extended reality (XR) healthcare training solutions, is working closely with Cambridge University Health Partners and the National Health Service (NHS) to create holographic healthcare simulations. In this article, XR Today discusses healthcare XR and Metaverse training solutions with Cambridge University and GigXR. The publication spoke with Arun Gupta, Director of Postgraduate Education for Cambridge University Health Partners, and David King Lassman, Founder and CEO for GigXR.
VirtaMed announced a partnership to develop a new virtual reality simulator program to support surgeon skills training for the Hominis Surgical System. Hominis is the first-ever FDA-authorized surgical robot that features miniature humanoid-shaped arms, with shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints that provide human-level dexterity and 360-degree articulation, and is indicated for use in a single site, natural orifice laparoscopic-assisted transvaginal benign gynecological procedures including benign hysterectomy. Memic anticipates that the simulator program will be ready for real-world use by the end of 2022.
Advanced Simulation Technology Helps Learners & Residents Prepare for Unexpected
In early February, physicians, nurse anesthetists, operating room technicians, and general surgery residents at William Beaumont Army Medical Center participated in an exercise involving the most advanced healthcare simulation technology in the Department of Defense. A multi-disciplinary clinical simulation using a human patient simulator was run, involving a complex situation, which developed rapidly into an emergency. The team had to work through the emergent situation and appropriately diagnose and treat the patient. Daniel Comerci, anesthesiologist and medical director of the WBAMC simulation program, commented that having an environment where medical professionals can learn and practice safely really helps providers grow and become better physicians and nurses, to care for military personnel and beneficiaries.
Simulation Training Helps Hone Advanced Surgical Skills, International Trial Finds
This research article details how an international research team leading a randomized controlled trial across 10 countries found that while simulation-based training did not statistically improve initial learning curves regarding surgeon’s general proficiency, it did produce an increase of skills in more complex surgeries, with fewer total complications and ureteric injuries in the simulation group. The results were published in the journal European Urology. One of the paper’s authors, Takashige Abe, Associate Professor of Urology at Hokkaido University’s Graduate School of Medicine in Japan, noted that when stratified to each procedure type, there were higher rates of proficiency in the simulation-based training group when it came to the more technically challenging flexible ureteroscopy procedure.
Next-Generation Simulation Learning: Interview with James Archetto, VP of Gaumard Scientific
Over the years, Gaumard Scientific, a Florida-based patient simulator business, has emerged from a very small company, into a company that has completely revolutionized the simulation industry. Now, the company has developed an advanced multidisciplinary patient simulator – the HAL S5301. In February 2022, Medgadget had the opportunity to interview James Archetto, VP of Gaumard Scientific, about this latest simulator the company has created, as well as the value the simulator brings to the healthcare industry.
Jen Arnold Named Director of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Simulator Program
Dr. Jennifer Arnold has relocated to Boston, Massachusetts after being named the new Director of Boston Children’s Hospital’s Simulator Program. Prior to her Boston move, the reality star had ventured over to St. Petersburg, Florida, from Houston, Texas, after Arnold was hired as the director of the Simulation Center at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Medical Center in 2017.
Plans Underway for Knox Regional Health Science, Simulation Center
According to the OakRidger, Roane State Community College, the Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT) Knoxville, and Covenant Health have announced a partnership that will bring a new healthcare training facility to East Tennessee. The center is meant to replace Roane State’s current Knox County Center for Health Sciences, a 16,000-square-foot campus currently located at 132 Hayfield Road in West Knoxville, and will be the new home of TCAT Knoxville’s health science programs. The facility will further enable instructors to provide comprehensive simulations of the work students will be doing when they graduate, in settings similar to clinics and hospitals.
Nursing, Social Work Students Participate in Medical Simulations with Wallace, ACOM
Troy University social work and nursing students participated in a joint Interprofessional Education (IPE) medical simulation day alongside other healthcare students from Wallace Community College-Dothan (WCCD) and the Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine (ACOM). WCCD hosted the event in its new Health Sciences Simulation Center in mid-February. During the day-long event, students from each institution worked together to care for a standardized patient with the goal of gaining a better understanding of the roles and responsibilities each profession has in inpatient care.
Transformative Healthcare Announces Paramedic Scholarship Program For EMTs
Transformative Healthcare announced the service will provide a $1,000,000 Paramedic Training School scholarship program for more than 80 EMT students. The program will be the only one in Massachusetts to feature Oculus Virtual Reality, Immersive Interactive’s immersive simulation technologies, and specialized simulation mannequins by TraumaFx and LifeCast. This state-of-the-art technology will allow paramedic students to experience real-life situations and treat mock patients.
10 Essential Ingredients for Digital Twins in Healthcare
Digital twins could transform healthcare with a more integrated approach for capturing data, providing more timely feedback, and enabling more effective interventions. The information required to allow for better simulations lies scattered across medical records, wearables, mobile apps, and pervasive sensors. This article examines the fundamental building blocks that work together to build a digital twin infrastructure for medicine. Author George Lawton explains how promising techniques like APIs, graph databases, ontologies, and electronic health records are being combined to unlock digital transformation in healthcare.
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Lance Baily, BA, EMT-B, is the Founder / CEO of HealthySimulation.com, which he started in 2010 while serving as the Director of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas. Lance also founded SimGHOSTS.org, the world’s only non-profit organization dedicated to supporting professionals operating healthcare simulation technologies. His co-edited Book: “Comprehensive Healthcare Simulation: Operations, Technology, and Innovative Practice” is cited as a key source for professional certification in the industry. Lance’s background also includes serving as a Simulation Technology Specialist for the LA Community College District, EMS fire fighting, Hollywood movie production, rescue diving, and global travel. He and his wife live with their two brilliant daughters and one crazy dachshund in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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