Abstract:

For decades, medicine has been taught on the apprenticeship model. With increasing demand for more medical school graduates, heightened concern for patient safety, and a need for better continuing education to keep practicing physicians up-to-date with new technology, simulation and multimedia systems are becoming essential component of medical curricula. Recent advances in simulation technology have improved student’s understanding of disease pathophysiology and enhanced the opportunity for clinical skills training. SimMan is a portable and advanced patient simulator for team training. SimMan has realistic anatomy and clinical functionality. It provides simulation-based education to challenge and test students' clinical and decision-making skills during realistic patient care scenarios. On the other hand, Harvey simulator is Cardiopulmonary Patient Simulator. It is a proven system to teach bedside cardiovascular medical skills that transfer to real patients. Harvey simulator realistically simulates nearly any cardiac disease by varying blood pressure, pulses, heart sounds and murmurs. With increasing availability of High-Fidelity Patient Simulators to different medical educational programs, the comprehensive deployment of HFPS at different teaching aspects is questioned. The purpose of this presentation is to provide comprehensive examples of using HFPS to facilitate teaching at different levels and specialties in medical teaching. It also gives examples of how to use HFPS as a part of Problem-Based Learning, development of clinical case scenarios and as a model for teaching the basic principles of physiology. Finally, we will highlight the limitations of HFPS in teaching, which should be carefully considered to determine the extent of using HFPS at medical education programs.

Keywords:

high-fidelity patient simulators, SimMan, Harvey simulator, medical education.