Medical simulation centres teach doctors how to cope with a crisis
Medical simulation centres aim to teach doctors and nurses how to cope with a crisis before it occurs in the operating theatre, writes Kate Whitehead
A man lies on the operating table, a heart monitor bleeping his vital signs. There are five others in the theatre: two doctors, two nurses and an assistant. They are scrubbed up, ready for surgery, but something is wrong.
The chief surgeon leans over the patient and the nurses can smell the alcohol on his breath. Someone has to step in and say something because he's in no fit state for work. The nurses glance warily at each other; he might be drunk, but he's the senior surgeon, which means he's a god in the hospital.
The more senior nurse takes the plunge. He suggests instead of actually performing the operation, the surgeon oversees it. The doctor snaps back, he is fine to operate. Unconscious on the table, the patient's condition begins to deteriorate. The nurse tries again, trying to make his point without being rude.
The environment was just like being at work. It's the actual equipment
Fortunately, this was a fictional scenario. It was played out a few weeks ago at the Hong Kong Jockey Club Innovative Learning Centre for Medicine, a new medical simulation training centre in Aberdeen. Kenneth Leung, a nursing officer at United Christian Hospital in Kwun Tong, joined a two-day training course and was scripted into the tense operating theatre simulation.
"It was a challenging scenario and all about assertive communication and how you deal with hierarchy if the surgeon does something wrong," says Leung, who has worked in Accident and Emergency for 10 years.
Medical simulation is an education technique. Put simply, it's an opportunity for medics to practise before they do the real thing and is based on aviation simulation techniques. It has become an important element of health care training over the past decade, but Hong Kong has been slow to embrace it - until now.
"We try to mimic a real working situation and train all the different professionals working together in a crisis situation. It can get very tense for those in the hot seat," says Dr Tung Wai-kit, the centre's honorary director.