During lunch, the Introducing to Clinical Medicine support staff were helping our professor (we'll call him Dr. Interesting because he NEVER gives a boring lecture) set up STAN. STAN is a relatively new took in medical training--1996. STAN is a simulator that breathes/respires, blinks, and I think he can even talk. He codes but since he is only a simulator, if a medical student make an error and gives the wrong medication, no one really dies. Yes, I said "gives the wrong medication". Students get to start IVs, give injections, perform CPR and even perform endotracheal intubation. You may have seen him on t.v. as he makes appearances on Grey's Anatomy and other medical shows. I'm not sure if our professors can talk back to us as STAN which is what happened on Gray's Anatomy, but I think they probably can. I do not know when students at United States Medical Schools get to start using the STAN machines, but I think it generally is later in their career (but this may have changed as there are more places with STANS). I have heard 3-4th years or even during residency, but I'm not sure and I couldn't find anything online. I do my first session (with 6 other students) next Thursday, so I'll report on if we can keep STAN alive or not.
Dr. Interesting's lecture was on respiratory failure. Because he is Dr. Interesting, he didn't just want to show pictures or videos of a patient, which is why he brought in STAN. Dr. Interesting showed us each method of increasing oxygen (such as a nasal cannulus, incubating and bagging the patient and putting a patient on a respirator). STAN's vital signs were on monitors all over the room (by monitors, I really mean large plasma t.v.s and a HUGE screen in the front. The huge screen isn't a projector, but it isn't a plasma t.v. either...it is probably 15 feet by 15 feet, which is also roughly the size t.v. that Farley wants in his bedroom). So Dr. Interesting kept things interesting by letting a student give the medicines to sedate and paralyze STAN and then Dr. Interesting incubated STAN. Let's just say, it was more fun than looking at a picture in a book. STAN got sleepy, closed his eyes, and once Dr. Interesting had incubated him, we could see the change s in STAN's breathing. Yes, Dr. Interesting got his nickname for a reason. Class was so much fun today.
Photo taken from an interesting article on simulators in medical training from The Guardian.
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