First-year doctors can find out how they will fare in real-life medical situations by working with actors and mannequins at MSU.
Faculty of the MSU College of Human Medicine are using standardized patients — actors trained to exhibit symptoms of any ailment — and computerized dummies with programmable vital signs to assess the strengths and weaknesses of residents.
Residents are doctors who have completed medical school and work in hospitals while pursuing further studies in their preferred areas of specialization.
About 250 residents will be participating in the Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation program of the MSU College of Human Medicine.
The program began on Friday and will continue on selected days until August at the new Learning and Assessment Center in Fee Hall.
"When residents have a clear idea of their skills sets, they can feel more comfortable in their new roles as doctors," said Dr. Dianne Wagner, associate dean for Graduate Medical Education for the MSU College of Human Medicine.
Wagner worked closely with other doctors from area hospitals during the past year and a half to develop the evaluation program.
Participants are videotaped and evaluated as they go through 10 different stations and perform basic medical procedures on a standardized patient, such as performing a medical examination, evaluating symptoms and recommending treatments, Wagner said.
She added that in these scenarios, the actors who stand in as patients also provide feedback to MSU faculty on the interaction skills of the doctor.
"This is a good way to take knowledge we learned in school for the past four years and apply it to clinical situations," said Dr. Tracy Riddle, who went through the program and is a physician at the Ingham Regional Medical Center.
The doctors also get the chance to save SimMan and MegaCode Kelly.
SimMan is a computerized mannequin that can cough, wheeze, gasp and produce different heart and lung sounds.
It can be programmed to mimic a critically-ill patient with changing vital signs and can even say, "I'm going to die," Wagner said.
MegaCode Kelly is a less sophisticated version of SimMan with changeable parts that can make it either a male or female patient.
It got its name because "Kelly" can either be a man or woman, Wagner said.
"Working with the dummies gives you a chance to interact with a patient that was not really dying but has serious respiratory and cardiac issues," said Dr. Andrew Riddle, another physician at Ingham Regional Medical Center. "You can treat the patient without worrying about the consequences.
"A 'learning environment' is very different from a 'doing environment,' and the program gives you the chance to put both together."
