This past Friday I had the pleasure of spending the day Dr. Peter Brindley and his patient simulation team from Capital Health in Edmonton. They brought their expertise to Saskatoon and allowed us to experience the wonderful tool simulation can be for a medical team. I played RT all day while different groups consisting mostly of physicians and nurses ran through different scenarios.
It was very realistic to run through a simulation that happens in real time with a patient that can change dynamically. SAM (the patient simulator) does it all; breathes, talks, has pulses, lines can be inserted, can be intubated, trached and ventilated and will react to treatment and intervention.
I soon realized that this tool is truly great in improving and working on the communication skills of a multidisciplinary team and as Dr. Peter Brindley, the Capital Health medical lead for patient simulation and assistant professor of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Alberta, says "Simulation provides realistic multidisciplinary training. Not only do participants need to deal with the medical crisis at hand, but they also develop strategies on how to work within a team during stressful situations, how to communicate better and how to manage resources."
After this experience I truly believe that this is the future of medicine. Many other industries, such as airlines, currently require simulations regularly it is about time medicine catches up. Why must we continually use our patients to practice skills and improve care. I now hope that after this exposure to this type of tool in my Health Region we will be able to initiate our own program in the future.
I would like to thank Dr. Brindley and his team for once again coming to Saskatoon. I hope this engaging speaker will be able to join us again in the future.
Filed under: Quality Improvement
Jeff,
Wow! I lucked onto your blog through a search and have tucked it away in my favorites. Nice work!
I have been an RT since 1978 and am still very active in the field….work a lot with students, who will be excited to see a few of these articles/videos.
Thank you for the time and effort to maintain this site.
Tammy
Glad you enjoy the site. I found a lack of respiratory therapy related blogs on the internet, so I decided I should start one.
I enjoy coming across and reviewing new articles. So it is my pleasure to share them with others.
Jeffd
Great to see this information published. We need to bring it forward. We have been using simulation for over 30 years as a means to practice before real patient contact. It is really unfortunate that we haven’t been publishing on the topic. I guess we all just felt it was the norm. The new high fidelity systems will take it to a different level for practice so we need to be on the front page. Hopefully our educators will run with this and play a major role in it’s growth and development. Nice Blog keep up the good work. More of us should be doing this.
Les Matthews
Thompson Rivers University Respiratory Therapy Program