Press Date: 10/24/2005

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Center for Medical Education and Innovation (CME+I™) at Riverside Methodist Hospital has been awarded $290,000 in grants. The grants, housed at the OhioHealth Foundation, will be used to study how training physicians, nurses, and healthcare professionals in a simulated hospital environment using human patient simulators affects medical education outcomes and, potentially, patient outcomes.

CME+I™ is a comprehensive medical training facility that opened in June 2005. It features multiple innovative human patient simulation and education technologies all under one roof.

“It is important that we not only train healthcare professionals using simulation technology but also measure the impact of that training on how physicians, nurses and others learn and practice medicine,” said Pamela J. Boyers, PhD, director of Medical Education at Riverside. “There has been limited research done on the use of clinical simulation, so we are very excited to be undertaking this study.”

Using medical simulators to enhance the medical education curriculum is gaining widespread use; using a virtual hospital of linked sophisticated human patient simulators, like that at CME+I™, to support team-based training has not been done outside the military. No definitive studies examining its effectiveness have been completed.

Over a period of 15 months, CME+I™ will lay down the foundation for systematically and routinely assessing educational outcomes.

The grants received include:

* $250,000 from the VHA Health FoundationMore than 70 healthcare organizations applied for this year’s VHA Health Foundation grant and only four were selected. The VHA Health Foundation was created by VHA Inc. to encourage leadership and innovation in addressing health and healthcare issues. The VHA Health Foundation funds programs that focus on new approaches to health and healthcare that make a difference, generate synergies that bring resources to add value and enhance outcomes, and diffuse knowledge and best practices.

* $40,000 from the Harry C. Moores FoundationThe Harry C. Moores Foundation, located in Columbus, makes grants to organizations which serve the central Ohio area. The Foundation supports a broad range of charitable, religious, and educational organizations. The Moores Foundation has granted more than $760,000 over the past 31 years to support special projects and programs at Riverside.

The Facility

The Center for Medical Education and Innovation™ at Riverside Methodist Hospital is a prototype training center that incorporates some of the world’s most advanced healthcare simulation technologies.

Medical professionals are able to follow patient simulators from one environment to the next, such as the transition from an emergency paramedic response site to an emergency room to an operating room. Additionally, they can train as teams to achieve the highest levels of clinical integration and excellence. Team training is often cited as an essential element in addressing patient safety concerns.

The Center provides an environment for residents, physicians and nurses to enhance their skills. By using challenging clinical scenarios, they have the opportunity to learn new procedures and techniques with a human patient simulator before going to the bedside of a real patient.

The 20,000-square-foot CME+I™ features:

* The Virtual Care Unit (VCU™) – The VCU was created by the Riverside medical education team and consists of four separate hospital environments: an operating room, a trauma unit, an ICU room and a standard patient room. Each has its own advanced, human patient simulator, some capable of more than 72,000 combinations of physiologic responses. The VCU features four adult and one pediatric simulator as well as one of the world’s first infant simulators.

At the core of the VCU is a central control room with one-way windows where “drivers” will be able to run separate scenarios in each of the rooms simultaneously or raise the walls between the rooms for mass casualty exercises. Activity in the room will be recorded with cameras and patient responses on computer for later review and assessment. It will also be possible to recreate actual hospital cases in the VCU.

* The Cardiac and Endovascular Simulation Lab – The lab is one of the first such systems in the country and was developed by the Medical Simulation Corporation. The system will enable physicians and other healthcare professionals to practice delicate, catheter-based procedures such as balloon angioplasties and stent placements in an incredibly realistic environment. “Simantha™,” the patient simulator, will offer verbal feedback about how she is “feeling” while vital sign monitors will react to various medications and procedures.

* Laboratory Skills Center (LSC) – A center with a variety of clinical simulators including: airway management trainers for intubations; laparoscopic trainers for practicing minimally invasive surgical techniques; pelvic exam trainers where even the pressure of a doctor’s hand touching an ovary can be measured; a microvascular lab for practicing suturing techniques, tendon reattachments, etc.; and an ob-gyn patient model where teams can practice skills for delivering babies.

Riverside Methodist Hospital

Riverside Methodist Hospital is a member of OhioHealth, a nationally recognized, not-for-profit, charitable organization serving and supported by the community. Based in Columbus, Ohio, OhioHealth is a family of 15 hospitals, health and surgery centers, home-health providers, medical equipment and health service suppliers throughout a 46-county area. Other OhioHealth hospitals in central Ohio are Grant Medical Center, Doctors Hospital, Grady Memorial Hospital and Dublin Methodist Hospital (to open in late 2007). For more information, visit www.ohiohealth.com/riverside.