Simulation Center 
PCOM Georgia

In the PCOM Georgia Simulation Center exam room, students learn about doctor-standardized patient encounters. This allows student-doctors the opportunity to practice their clinical and humanistic skills.

Standardized patients are trained to document the skills of students and to provide them with honest and constructive feedback based on clinical performance. The patients portray a medical scenario the same way for each student who examines them. During an encounter, the student takes a patient’s history, performs an appropriate physical examination and then provides the patient with a corresponding assessment and plan.

The standardized patient area has 10 exam rooms. Each room is designed to be an accurate representation of what the students will see in the “real world.” Exam rooms are also equipped with adjustable osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM) tables.

Faculty can watch the patient encounters live from either the review room or the proctor stations. Each exam room is equipped with two cameras and microphones. The audio and video can be recorded to provide faculty with the opportunity to review a student’s performance at a later date.

The Center uses four full-body high fidelity patient simulators.

These patient simulators breathe and have heartbeats, pupils that react to light and medications, pulses that can be felt at eight locations and lung sounds. They can also talk and accurately mimic human physiology responses to procedures such as CPR, intubation, ventilation and catheterization.

The maternity room allows students to perform multiple procedures. A wireless birthing simulator allows students to hear heart sounds in five locations based on fetal presentation. The baby has an articulated neck, shoulder, elbows, hips and knees. It has a fetal neck traction sensing with palpable fontanel and sagittal suture, a sectional airway, umbilical cord that can be clamped and cut, and an audible cry upon delivery.

The patient simulator also features audible lung sounds with a visible chest rise and fall. Controllable pulses in eight locations can be connected to a real electrocardiogram monitor.

The latest addition to the Simulation Center is a neonate simulator which has a programmable mouth and eyes as well as limb movement. The neonate simulator can be placed on a ventilator for support if needed and features heart and lung sounds, palpable pulses as well as single limb, unilateral or full body seizures.

The 14 station skills lab is used to train students to perform various procedures. Students may work individually or as part of a class to practice with different task trainers.

Task trainers include intubation airway trainers, lumbar puncture trainers, central line trainers, femoral line trainers, shoulder joint injection trainers, IV arm trainers, atrial line trainers, breast simulator trainers, adult CPR trainers, pediatric CPR trainers, infant CPR trainers, female pelvic trainers, male pelvic trainers, suture pad trainers and mask fitting trainers.

The emergency and ICU room can be used as a four-bed emergency room, intensive care unit, medical surgical floor or a combination of each.

Each bed has a working headboard with simulated oxygen, air and suction. Each station has two cameras for monitoring and recording as well as two microphone systems: an overhead system and a second system. The overhead system allows for students to call for labs, X-rays or additional staff while the second system allows instructors to communicate with the students.

The room has fully-stocked crash carts and a supply room which instructors use to build trauma, cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, diabetic, stroke or other medical simulations.

There are four adult simulators which replicate a number of functions and may also be hooked to monitors.

The simulated operating room is fully equipped with a working operating table, air, oxygen, suction, lights and a trauma simulator which provides students with the opportunity to perform surgical-type procedures while also learning about the operating room environment.

Second-year students practice scrub procedures at the scrub sink prior to their operating room rotations.

The operating room is also equipped with a laparoscopic trainer which allows instructors to develop custom curricula and an endoscopy simulator for training students to use the scopes for endoscopic procedures.

The virtual education system allows students to talk through simulations in a virtual environment and allows instructors to build cases which place students in settings such as a hospital, living room, ambulance or a family doctor’s office.

The Simulation Center has a total of three control rooms strategically located within the center. These rooms provide a secluded area where faculty can monitor and evaluate student performance during simulated exercises as well as control the various simulators, audio/video system and lab equipment.

The main control room services the maternity/pediatrics suite, skills classroom, emergency/ICU suite and the operating room suite. The secondary control room services the emergency/ICU suite. The review control room services the exam rooms.

The mobile simulation lab is a teaching tool for trauma and pre-hospital care. The lab resembles an ambulance and houses modern emergency equipment including vital monitors, stretchers, splints, suctioning equipment, intubation equipment, simulated medications and much more. In addition, equipment and patient mannequins found in the Simulation Center can be moved into the mobile lab.

Emergency simulations are conducted inside and around the vehicle. Doctoral and medical simulation students can practice a variety of scenarios including cardiac arrest, childbirth, bone fractures, burns, gunshot wounds, allergic reactions, overdoses and more.

The lab is used to teach both PCOM Georgia and PCOM South Georgia students when it makes trips between the two locations. It is also used during community education events such as the Gwinnett Science Fair or numerous Trauma Days held in conjunction with area institutions and EMS stations.