Due to the incredible technological advances that have occurred over the past several decades, people around the world have benefitted from life-enhancing developments such as the Internet and the sophistication of computers and software.

These types of advances have been especially advantageous to the medical field, which is constantly seeking new ways to improve training opportunities for student physicians that will result in enhanced patient care at all levels. When it comes to the schooling of medical students, one of the more-recent innovations has been the introduction of full-body, high-fidelity human patient simulators, which serve as functional teaching tools that deliver an easily controlled teaching laboratory where students can practice their skills until high-level patient care becomes second nature.

Dr. David Thomas, chair of NSU-COM’s Department of Surgery, demonstrates how to properly intubate a patient using the I-Stan simulator.

Nova Southeastern University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (NSU-COM) recently purchased a $65,000 METI I-Stan simulator to provide its students with yet another educational tool to hone their arsenal of clinical skills. “As computers and technology have become more advanced and less expensive, it made it more affordable for us to purchase a full-body simulator,” said Marti Echols, Ph.D., M.Ed., assistant professor of internal medicine and assistant dean of medical education. “It’s an incredible teaching tool because it has the programming capabilities to simulate all types of health incidences and disease states.”

Because the wireless and tetherless I-Stan is model-driven, just about anything that can happen to a real patient—from common problems to severe events such as malignant hyperthermia, anaphylaxis, tension pneumothorax, and cardiac tamponade—can be simulated and tailored. In addition, because learning to administer the right drug in the right dosage to the right patient requires knowledge and experience, I-Stan allows students to master this vital skill without fear of harming an actual patient.

“I saw this as an opportunity for the college to really link textbook and classroom knowledge with clinical training,” Dr. Echols explained. “When the students get significant exposure to I-Stan in their second year of study, they’ve already obtained quite a bit of textbook knowledge. However, without the ability of really seeing how a patient responds and what happens to the body while it’s in a stressed condition, there’s no way for a student to know or anticipate all the things that will happen.”

Dr. Heidi Lane, NSU-COM director of patient-centered education, oversees a student encounter with the I-Stan simulator.

Due to the fact that I-Stan can be preprogrammed via a computer to simulate so many symptoms and disease states, NSU-COM students get to react to the type of real-life scenarios they will be dealing with during their clinical rotations, postgraduate training—and beyond. “When we’re writing a scenario for the students to do, we can actually program I-Stan so he actually changes states, as would be the case with an actual patient,” Dr. Echols said. “For example, if a patient is brought into the ER and the physician doesn’t give the patient oxygen within a certain amount of time, body function continues to worsen, which could precipitate the onset of going into shock or convulsions. The same goes for I-Stan. The student has to come in and recognize what’s wrong very quickly and immediately begin a treatment plan.”

According to Dr. Echols, I-Stan has even been allowed to “die” on several occasions to illustrate to students how their actions can lead to severely dire consequences when a patient is not dealt with swiftly or appropriately. “When this occurs, the physician in charge that day will take over and explain to the student why his or her actions would have killed an actual patient,” she stated.

The successful implementation of I-Stan into the college’s curriculum has already resulted in the pending acquisition of a second simulator to meet the students’ demand for additional hands-on training. “I truly felt I-Stan would enhance the students’ understanding of what they’re doing,” she said. “It’s one thing to acquire knowledge, but it’s quite another to understand and apply that knowledge to the patient. That was really our goal—to have I-Stan be the vehicle that could really put our students at the forefront of medical education in terms of clinical training.”