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“Beep, beep, beep”
This patient is fading fast. “Is he breathing at all spontaneously? All
right, so Chuck, let’s get ready to intubate.”
And these doctors have to figure out what to do about it.
“We’ve got a pulse of 123, he’s hypoxic to 94 percent, and again, we gotta think trauma
here, right? Do we have pulses on him?
“What do we have?”
“What do you see, Chuck?”
This is just one of the simulation rooms at UC San Diego’s new medical training center,
located on the main campus in La Jolla. It’s the new home for more than 600 medical
students, residents, and fellows. The building has classrooms,
meeting rooms, and the largest lecture hall at UC San Diego.
Like every other room in this new building, this auditorium is hooked up to a wireless
video network. Here, students can see surgeries or lecturers beamed in from anywhere in the
world.
But it’s the building’s Center for the Future of Surgery that’s the real eye-opener.
It’s filled with operating rooms that are better equipped than those found in many hospitals.
And it’s here where aspiring surgeons, and even those already in practice, can hone their
skills. “In a facility like the Center for the Future
of Surgery and the Simulation Training Center, we can duplicate scenarios, and simulate things
before we go into the operating room. And we can teach the residents, faculty from other
institutions, surgeons who want to learn new techniques, to practice them here, before
they go into the operating room.”
In one of the center’s operating theatres, a surgical fellow gets her first crack at
using a robotic surgery machine.
While the doctor manipulates the robotic arms with her hands, she looks at a monitor that
provides a 3-D image of the operating site.
In yet another operating suite, a surgeon-in-training practices suturing on an arthroscopic trainer.
“I feel so incredibly lucky to have access to this lab, the technology we have here.
And, you have to get, for me as a surgeon, I see this, this is like a playground. These
are toys. I can use all this equipment anytime, increase my ability, impress my attending,
and ultimately become a better surgeon for it.”
Some of the training devices provide an amazing substitute for the human body. This one, for
example, gives students an idea of what it’s like to see the inside of a woman’s uterus.
School officials agree that all of the technology is impressive. But they say the ultimate goal
of the new center is help doctors master both the art and the science of medicine.
“And so this building is designed for both of those, to be able to teach really how to
understand what’s going on with patients, and then to do what needs to be done well.”