Patient Simulator

[gaseous]

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I am wondering how big of a benefit having a patient simulator was at your program? Did your program and yourself use the simulator on a regular basis or did you spend days specifically assigned to it? I noticed when researching programs that some had it and some didn't. I'm not sure if that would be a reason to go to a program over another with all other things being equal. When I was originally researching programs I used whether or not the program had a simulator as one of my screening criteria. I'm not sure if that was naive of me and I'm not sure whether it really made much of a difference in your training.

I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences on the subject.

 

[UTSouthwestern]

The simulator is a good practice management device but I personally could never get really stressed by what was supposed to be the real life situations we would have to encounter. We used it regularly in my CA-1 year but toward the end of the year, none of the scenarios really seemed that difficult to manage. I think in the first six months of your CA-1 year, it will definitely benefit the development of your thought processes in the various scenarios, but beyond that time period you will not benefit much more. More helpful are the PBLD sessions that help you dissect difficult cases from top to bottom and give you more breadth and depth of planning for future cases.