Simulation lab receives $2 million grant
The simulation team working with Steve Dawson, MD, recently received a $2 million grant from the U.S. Army to continue its efforts in developing tools that will be used for trauma training.
Dr. Dawson heads CIMIT’s Simulation Program, based in CIMIT offices in Cambridge. Its mission is to develop synthetic models that will help improve the standard of medical care, in both military and civilian situations. With tools and training systems that simulate real events and injuries, trainees can learn by their mistakes in a risk-free environment.
The grant will help his group over the next two years to develop autonomous, independent simulated human prototypes that reproduce the physical injuries and conditions that people could experience in combat or in civilian life. Medics, EMTs, nurses and doctors can train on those at-risk “patients.”
“This grant allows our team to continue its work in creating new systems to train medical personnel at all levels, from first responders to hospital-based care,” said Dr. Dawson, an interventional radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “CIMIT is dedicated to helping improve care on the battlefield and in civilian situations they may not encounter frequently, but where immediate and proper response is crucial to successful outcomes.”
The grant was made in support of one of his team’s major projects, COMETS, the Combat Medical Training System. Featured is a fully autonomous synthetic human being. It will live or die depending on how the responder treats it. COMETS allows training for advanced trauma life-support activities, including airway management, chest trauma, hemorrhage control and shock resuscitation.
Unlike commercial systems, its waterproof and rugged design will allow training under realistic conditions, indoors and out, good weather and bad, night or day. With an emphasis on simplicity of operation and a low learning curve, COMETS is aimed at allowing instructors to focus on delivering training quickly and efficiently, with realistic responses to treatment that will reinforce learning for the trainee.
Dr. Dawson said, “The COMETS system will expose the soldier medic and civilian first-responder to realistic representations of what will be encountered when actual lives are at risk.”
He added, “Our team’s work is dedicated to improving patient safety, especially for reducing errors that result from incorrect care or inadequate technical skill. Our systems can be used by civilian responders, as well as hospital-based medical personnel and military medical teams. The traditional model of training inexperienced physicians and nurses on actual patients is being examined by the pubic and federal agencies and found wanting: The tolerance for using patients as teaching tools has gone down as people have become aware of the rates of medical errors over the last 10 years. Efforts like ours are designed to produce a different model for medical learning, one where the patient isn’t the first experience for the caregiver, one where early mistakes are made in an environment where no one suffers because of a mistake, and errors can be ‘trained out.’ As systems like this are developed, tested and inserted into training centers, we should see a reduction in the mistakes that are caused by people working beyond their capabilities. Our work has been at the forefront of some of the new teaching revolutions in medicine, and this grant gives us support to push the simulation-based learning envelope even further.”
John Parrish, MD, director of CIMIT, said, “CIMIT is a long-time supporter of simulation, and its potential to help in both military and civilian situations. This grant will help Dr. Dawson and his team to continue their valuable work to train medical personnel to provide better care to those who need it.”