Cyber Medicine

Virtual reality and patient simulators are taking medical education to the next level.

By Faith Adams

It isn't uncommon for medical students at the University of Minnesota to perform procedures on patients who have already been subjected to thousands of needle sticks, intubations, and more. The patients may turn blue from distress or develop abnormal heartbeats or dangerously low blood pressure. They may plead for help or moan in pain, but otherwise they have relatively few complaints. In fact, they don't remember one incident from the next.

This is because these patients aren't live patients at all, but sophisticated patient simulators with eyes that blink, pupils that dilate, chests that move up and down with each breath, and a pulse in their wrists, neck, elbows, and groin. They can even describe their symptoms or scream in pain via a microphone operated by an instructor observing in an adjacent room.

Medical students use a sophisticated patient simulator to help them learn life-saving resuscitation skills at the University's Interprofessional Education and Resource Center. Pictured is Erika Miles.

Increasingly, patient simulators like these are being used to augment the training of medical students and residents, and this emphasis on learning skills through virtual reality simulation is about to increase at the University of Minnesota. A 5,000-square-foot simulation center, slated to open next spring, is being built on the lower level of the Phillips-Wangensteen Building.

"When students interact with one of these patient simulators, the level of engagement is very gratifying, both for the student and for the instructor," says Joe Clinton, M.D., professor and head of the Medical School's Department of Emergency Medicine and chief of emergency medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center. "The simulated environment becomes very realistic in the eyes of the student. The adrenaline starts to flow when you're working with a mannequin whose eyes are blinking, whose blood pressure is dropping, and who is talking to you. This heightened level of engagement is called the activation state, where it's believed people learn better because they're energized and paying very close attention."

The Academic Health Center is devoting resources for the simulation center "in a collective way, so that all of the health science schools — medical, public health, dentistry, veterinary medicine, nursing, and pharmacy — will benefit," says Jane Miller, Ph.D., who heads the simulations task force for the Academic Health Center. She's also director of the Interprofessional Education and Resource Center (IERC) and the Standardized Patient Program. "This is just one of the unique aspects of this exciting initiative," says Miller. "We want to have people across the health sciences working together — for example, faculty from the Department of Anesthesiology working with students from the school of nursing, veterinary medicine, or dentistry." The new center also has a commitment to designing and building new patient simulators based on each user's educational needs and applications.

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