A Penn State researcher has shown that a robotic patient simulator can be an effective stand-in to teach doctors how new drugs affect real patients.
W. Bosseau Murray, M.D. associate professor of anesthesiology in Penn State' College of Medicine, recently conducted physician training programs using a patient simulator and the relatively new drug, remifentanil, an anesthetic manufactured by Glaxo Wellcome. The drug was introduced in 1996 after FDA approval. Its effects are strong, fast acting and last only five to 10 minutes. The drug's side effects appear equally quickly.
"This is an excellent drug, but because it is so potent, this training was very valuable for the physicians," says Murray, also an anesthesiologist at Hershey Medical Center of the Penn State Geisinger Health System.
"If you have never seen these side effects, and if the heart rate slows, you would grab medication to speed the heart rate and then it would go too fast. You would have this seesaw between slow and fast and this would not be good for the patient. With this training, the physician can accept a drop in heart rate, knowing it will come back in a minute or two."
Murray was one of several instructors who taught physicians the proper way to use the drug. He reports that a human patient simulator helps train physicians as it reacts in real time just as a human patient would react. By using different scenarios, physicians can get experience just as if they were treating human beings.
He explains that a human patient simulator was transported to 58 cities
across the U.S. in 1996 and 1997 so physicians could learn how to use the drug.
A total of 836 anesthesiologists and residents participated. Nearly 80 percent
had no prior experience with a full human patient simulator. Remifentanil was
available at 36 percent of the participants' hospitals, available on a trial
basis at 18 percent, under review in 19 percent, and not availa
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Contact: Leilyn Perri
lperri@psghs.edu
717-531-8604
Penn State
21-Oct-1998