New technology allows student doctors to practice operations and other procedures on simulators before trying them out on real patients, just as pilots practice for emergencies on aircraft simulators.
A team of researchers at Yale University, led by Dr. Leigh Evans, trained half of a group of junior doctors a new skill using simulation, while the other half of the group learned the skill in the old-fashioned “bedside” manner. The skill being studied, inserting a “central line” into one of the major veins in the body, is a very important one for doctors in many specialties.
After watching these junior doctors perform the procedure on nearly five hundred patients, the team found a much higher success rate for the doctors who trained with simulation.