What are Simulators?
The training and feedback method in which learners practice tasks and processes in lifelike circumstances using models or virtual reality is called Simulation. Feedbacks from observers, peers, actor-patients, and video cameras assist in improving skills.
Medical simulators help to review and practice procedures as frequently as required to reach proficiency, without causing any harm to the patients. Computer-based medical simulation provides a realistic and economical set of tools to improve and maintain the skills of health care providers. This also adds a valuable dimension to medical training.
There are several tools and approaches used by Simulation-based Medical Education (SBME):
- A full environment simulator in medicine consists of sophisticated mannequins, known as patient simulators. These simulators provide, health care professionals, with a computer-based patient that breathes, responds to drugs, talks, and drives all the clinical monitors in the operating room, e.g., blood pressure and pulse rate.
- There are task trainers, which provide a simulated subset of functionality, such as how to give a smallpox inoculation or how to insert a chest tube.
- Computer-based training provides software programs that train and assess clinical knowledge and decision-making skills.
The cross-disciplinary effort of Medical simulation brings together providers, including nurses, physicians, and allied health professionals from a variety of disciplines with computer scientists, researchers, educators, and human factors engineers.
