Medical education witnessed tremendous leaps during the past years, one of its most important pillars was the use of simulation in medical training, so what is this science and what it offers to doctors and specialists in health care and patients? How is it applied in health care?
These and other questions were asked by Dr. Abdullah Sabbah, head of the Simulation Department in Sidra Medicine in Qatar, the advisor and expert in simulation and medical education, and the regional trainer accredited at the American Heart Association.
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What does simulation science mean?
Simulation is a representation of reality and the foresight of the future, and it is an old science used in multiple fields such as aviation and aviation education, and in military fields such as military maneuvers that are part of the simulation, while entering the term simulation in the medical field and medical education is newly -new, almost 40 years ago.
The goal of introducing this modern science in medical education is to provide a safe environment for the medical staff and trainees to practice and develop their clinical skills, and it can also be used for the purposes of research and the development of various medical protocols, which is reflected in the patient’s health care and the trained at the same time.
Simulation provides a safe environment for the two parties to the equation: the trainee who may be a student of study seats at the university or a worker in the health sector, and the patient, as the simulation improves the quality of medical care provided, and contributes to reducing medical errors, and increases the efficiency of health care, which is reflected in the care provided to the patient.
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What types of simulation?
Simulation can be divided in more than one way, if we want to divide it in terms of tools used in simulation, it can be divided into simulation using a full -organ doll (Full Body Manikin) that simulates the functions of the body by more than 99%, the only thing that is unable to do is to do the bed and walk, otherwise it can simulate any vital signs of the human being such as heartbeat and chest height when breathing, and the doll It is able to speak and interact with healthcare providers, and recently artificial intelligence has been used to make the doll able to answer any question from the trainee.
Some dolls are able to respond to orders such as raising the hand or finger, and these represent the most advanced and higher dolls, and there are dolls that represent part of the body, but they are less developed and are less expensive.
The advanced dolls are more than $ 140,000 per doll, and the price depends on technological development. Some of the robots used in surgeries exceeding one million dollars, and these high costs constitute the biggest challenges facing workers in this field, in addition to the cost of high operation and periodic maintenance of dolls, and there is a scarcity of simulation specialists.
The latest technology in the field is not required in each center for simulation, as the type of tool used in simulation is determined in proportion to the desired goal.
If we want to classify it in terms of the type of trainees involved, the first type is the trainees on the seats of the study, and the virtual reality that is used in games and others has been used recently, this type of simulation attracts the attention of this generation.
The second type is the medical practitioners who work in the hospital and the focus here is to develop the protocols used in hospitals, such as protocols for dealing with natural disasters, where an annual exercise is done to train medical cadres to deal with these cases, and this is a kind of foresight.
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How does simulation reflect positively on medical practice?
Simulation provides a safe environment for the trainee from health care providers to develop his clinical skills and develop healthy protocols, away from psychological pressures related to the patient’s safety, and after the end of the simulation, the trainee gets feedback and points that can be developed, and the scenario can be restored until the trainee reaches the best performance.
Simulation helps the patient get the best health care in the least possible time without errors or complications, and then increases the patient’s satisfaction and his companions.
The medical system in general benefits from simulation, as the therapeutic cost resulting from medical errors and complications is less.
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What are the most prominent success stories achieved by simulation locally and internationally?
One of the success stories that we lived in 2018 in Sidra Hospital in Qatar was an operation to separate the two adaptive twins, this process was one of the first operations to be performed in the region.
Before childbirth, it was known that one of the pregnant women was holding the adaptive twins, and the preparation for the birth process began and how it would be dealt with with the twins. The most prominent challenge was that the twins were participating in the liver, while the rest of their organs were separate.
32 hours of simulation was conducted with the participation of 150 health care providers from those who are intended in these cases, including anesthesiologists, surgery, tissues, laboratory and blood bank, and the positive results of this simulation were among the factors that affected the success of the operation.
In Canada in 2019, a study was conducted on two groups of robots, a group trained in traditional methods, and the other was trained using simulation, and the result was that the surgicals of robots who were trained in simulation were able to complete the process in a lesser time by 30% of the team that trained in traditional methods, and the percentage of complications after the operation decreased by more than 25%.
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How do you look at the future of simulation?
Technology is friendly to humans, and if it is used in the right ways, it can be used to foresee the future and develop medicines and vaccines in a manner that reduces the number of volunteers to experiment. Artificial intelligence and its algorithms will definitely improve medical care and contribute to developing the policies used in the medical sector.