The patient laid on his back, clutching his side and groaning. He told his hospital team there was a pileup on the highway and he tried to swerve and avoid it while he rode his motorcycle.
“Did you lose consciousness at all?” asked a young man in a white coat.
“No I don’t think so,” the patient said.
“Did you hit your head?”
“No, just my side,” he replied as he held his stomach.
Although there was no such highway pileup in Roanoke on Friday morning, local nursing, physician assistant and medical students practiced how they would handle that exact patient at the Carilion Clinic Center for Simulation, Research and Patient Safety.
Each year, students from the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine, Radford University and Radford University Carilion come together for an inter-professional education day where they can treat a patient and learn about each other’s scope of work.
People are also reading…
“I think learning how significant communication is was important,” said Tori Jennings, a physician assistant student at Radford University Carilion. “We’ve talked about it before and had class with these other students, but putting it into practice was tougher than anticipated.”
Misty Flinchum, director of the simulation center, said the days students spend at the facility help break down the silos of each school and program.
“Each individual student is taught how to perform in their own individual role, so they don’t get a tremendous amount of opportunities to work together as they would in their actual work environment,” she said. “They’re able to gain knowledge from each other by working together and they’re able to practice teamwork and communication.”
The simulation center offers more than 13,000 square feet of simulated trauma and operating rooms, an intensive care unit, a mother and baby pediatric lab, and a debrief room for students to discuss what they learned.
Professionally trained patient actors play out scenarios and rehearsed responses to the kinds of questions students may ask as they decide the course of treatment. Instructors stand by to help guide their decision-making.
Kevin Broyles, an assistant professor at the medical school and an emergency room physician, said the chaos of a group of people in the room and the cries of a patient in pain replicate the environment of an emergency room.
The simulations also force students to learn how to interact with patients who sometimes don’t want to follow the textbook course of treatment.
On Friday, the patient actor said he had previously struggled with an opioid addiction and refused the painkillers from doctors. Students had to come up with alternatives that would be appropriate for his pain level, but also acceptable to the patient.
Broyles said all of the scenarios depicted in simulation are ones he’s seen in the emergency room. When he went through medical school, this kind of communication opportunity was much less common and he’s glad students get the opportunity to experience them before jumping into a real-life hospital setting.
“The actors give that sense of realism,” he said. “And it’s much easier to practice communication with someone who can respond. You want to have that person to person interaction.”
Flinchum said many medical errors in hospitals can be attributed to poor communication and teamwork. Instead of making mistakes in a real health care environment, Carilion wanted its students to make them during practice sessions like the ones on Friday.
Carilion expanded its simulation center to the new Roanoke building on Old Woods Avenue in 2018. Students work in the center daily, but a large inter-professional simulation day happens annually.
Allison Strauss, a third year medical student at Virginia Tech Carilion, said simulation days are a great opportunity to talk with other health care students, learn their roles and how they can be most beneficial for each other.
“That way, when we’re actually in a hospital environment we can understand what resources are available to us,” she said. “And we’ll know how everyone contributes to the team and to the best patient care.”