The Board of Trustees at the Arabian Gulf University (AGU) approved the establishment of a medical skills & simulation center (MSSC) as a pillar of its medical education.
As such, the center would foster the educational process as it has the flexibility to uphold and bolster the requirements of the medical curriculum for all study levels at the College of Medicine and Medical Science (CMMS) of AGU.
Thus, from the inception of its creation, the MSSC has its own management and administrative team to optimally accomplish its educational goals.
The MSSC has a fully dedicated medical director who coordinates the administrative aspects and various medical simulation activities. The director is further linked in the chain of command with the Dean of College of Medicine and Medical Science (CMMS) of the Arabian Gulf University.
Vision
Innovation in education through advanced and safe technology that contributes to the development of medical skills for both students and staff in medical services.
Vision
Continue medical education that contributes to the development of high clinical skills for both students and doctors.
Support and reinforce basic medical research regarding the use of technology through medical simulation.
Establish a strategic partnership with international medical simulation centers to foster the status of the MSSC at AGU.
Values:
- Precision: Work with high standards and medical skills.
- Distinction: Work with skills that exceed merely acceptable standards.
- Professionalism: Work in accordance with professional ethics and best practice.
- Intuition: Passion for work and achievements and delivery of support voluntarily.
Medical Simulation:
One of the most important steps in clinical curriculum development is the introduction of simulation based education (SBE) as a coherent and effective teaching and learning practice.
Simulation is a generic term that refers to an artificial representation of a real-world process to achieve educational goals through experiential learning, whilst remaining contextually appropriate and realistic. Medical simulation is a branch of simulation technology related to education and training in medical fields. It can involve simulated human patients or mannequins in a variety of simulated environment.
Simulation is performed in a situation that emulates a clinical setting aiming to learn the technical skills and competency required for healthcare. Furthermore, it is proposed as a method to bridge the educational gaps among various educational modalities.
It is also important to develop technical skills and also non-technical skills such as leadership, communication, situational awareness and clinical decision making.
AGU's MSSC provides training for inter-professional teams of medical students, caregivers, and clinical staff allowing them to explore, analyze and synthesize their actions to improve performance in real-life situations. Medical simulation allows the acquisition of clinical skills through deliberate practice rather than the apprentice mode of learning and serves as a surrogacy for real patients. Therefore, a trainee can make mistakes and learn safely from the simulated situation without the fear of harming an actual patient.
Thus, one of the objectives of MSSC is to train medical students and professionals to reduce adverse events in health care during surgery, medical emergencies, major incidents, drug delivery and other critical situations.
Another objective of the MSSC is to additionally offer specialty courses in technical and non-technical subjects which shall be needs-based utilizing existing facilities.
Specific Target Groups of Learners for the AGU MSSC
Medical students in the clinical phase of the AGU are the primary targets identified to benefit from the MSSC. The pre-clinical phase students will acquire skill and knowledge from the use of the MSSC as well.
Medical interns and junior doctors in the Kingdom of Bahrain and the Arabian Gulf region who are preparing for Arab Board Certification would also greatly benefit.
These individuals would thus enjoy and benefit from a richer, holistic learning experience.
Facilities in the MSSC
Part-Task Trainers are provided for medical training of clinical examination and diagnostic procedures including both invasive and non-invasive clinical procedures.
These may consist of procedure which may cause embarrassment including examinations per rectum and the breast. A few examples of training in clinical procedures would be suturing and skin ligation, inserting a naso-gastric tube down into the stomach, advancing a catheter into the urinary bladder, advancing a catheterization into a peripheral or central vein, performing a lumbar puncture and fluid aspiration in chest.
Mannequin Models included the MSSC are as follows:
- Medium fidelity mannequins are used in the MSSC for training in basic life support
- (BLS) and advanced life support (ALS). These mannequins can accommodate a range of simultaneous activities such as endotracheal intubation and cardiac defibrillation and clinical examination.
- The MSSC has a high fidelity mannequin simulators controlled by a computer system which can replicate physical and physiological states along with other conditions including changes of blood pressure; heart rate; breathing, heart and respiratory sounds, voice, pupil diameter, and upper limb movement. Additionally, changes in vital signs; parameters of the cardiorespiratory function, respiratory gas exchange in response to physiological or pharmacological simulation while replicating the responses in real patients can further be displayed as part of the system. These have mainly been used for anesthesiologist training, or education of both pharmacology and physiology.
Structure of the MSSC
- Site of the Simulation Center
The MSSC is situated on the ground floor in the Arabian Gulf University and provides six large rooms for clinical examination of simulated patients, an emergency room and an operation theatre, two computer control rooms, two large debriefing rooms, and two part-task trainer rooms. - Manpower
A highly qualified seven member team which includes facilitators who are clinical educator physicians، information tehcnology specialists to manage computer system of the MSSC. This team will be able to conduct medical simulation training on a daily basis. - Equipment
MSSC has more than forty mannequins of which four are of high fidelity. There is an advanced learning space management system linked to a control room and a clinical examination room via a television circuit for recording medical simulation events. - Mandate
Our mandate is to:
Dovetail with existing teaching and learning methods in CMMS, affording repeated rehearsal of complex or infrequently available clinical learning opportunities.
Run medical courses of educational value in order to improve health care and promote good medical practice that shall enhance clinical competence, knowledge and the ability at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Continually emphasize and improve patient safety and reduce healthcare costs through enhancing clinical competencies of medical providers.
Offer numerous potential strategies for comprehensive and practical clinical training for a safer patient medical care.
Projected Expectations of the MSSC
It is hoped that the MSSC shall be a catalyst for spreading excellent medical practices among medical students, both junior and senior doctors of a wide array of specialties now and in the future.