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MUSC endowed chair opens first patient simulation center
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
He may have moved to Charleston only a year ago, but Dr. John J. Schaefer III, the endowed chair for patient simulation education and research at the Medical University of South Carolina, is already beginning to have an impact on patient treatment statewide.
On March 14, the first in a statewide network of patient simulation and education centers based on his groundbreaking research opened at the Greenville Hospital System. The facility is the first step in what Health Sciences South Carolina hopes will become a national model for clinical training for physicians, nurses and allied health professionals.
Part of HSSC’s Center of Economic Excellence in Clinical Effectiveness and Patient Safety, the Greenville Healthcare Simulation Center initially will be housed in a 6,500-square-foot facility on the campus of Greenville Memorial Hospital.
In late 2008, the facility will move to its permanent 12,000-square-foot home in a new building on the Health Sciences and Innovation campus at Greenville Memorial.
“That will provide expanded capacity for clinical education and research,” MUSC spokesman Tim Gehret said.
The temporary facility already houses more than a half million dollars worth of sophisticated simulation technology, including six high-end full-body adult and infant simulators.
The statewide network of simulation centers will operate under the name HealthCare Simulation South Carolina.
Statewide opportunity
Schaefer, formerly director of the Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation, Education and Research at the University of Pittsburgh, said he accepted the position of endowed chair for the opportunity to roll out his unique simulation-based training methodology on a statewide basis.
“In Pittsburgh, we were able to take our research and expand its application to a $3.5 billion university health system, but the problem with going further in Pennsylvania is it’s very hard to get one university to work with another, or even to get one health care system to work with another,” Schaefer said.
“South Carolina is very different. In South Carolina, the three research universities, each with its respective strengths, have a tradition of working together and working collaboratively with the business community. If we can fulfill my objectives, it’ll go a long way toward generalizing my research and expanding its application elsewhere.”
And that could create a change in how medical practitioners are trained in this country.
The established model of medical training in the United States grew out of the Flexner Report, an evaluation of American medical schools published by the Carnegie Foundation in 1910.
It was Abraham Flexner and his colleagues, in cooperation with the American Medical Association, who established the training paradigm of four years of college, followed by four years of medical school, the last two of which should consist of an apprenticeship or residency at a teaching hospital.
However, there was a problem with this kind of training, intensive as it was: Almost every medical student had to eventually try his hand at advanced medical procedures on a live person.
Schaefer came by his concerns about practitioner training while still a medical student at West Virginia University, as an outgrowth of his profound interest in the field of airway management and anesthesiology. At the time, mannequins used in medical training were just beginning to get a little more sophisticated in terms of the technology with which they were augmented.
After several only partially satisfying experiences, Schaefer reworked the
mannequin in his workshop, getting it to do more of what he wanted.
“The thing is, we have a lot of very good techniques for airway management, but they’re dangerous in inexperienced hands,” Schaefer said. “In fact, in traditional training, the school I came up in, you literally thought, ‘to save a life, I may have to risk it.’”
Simulation beginnings
The endowed chair position and the network of simulation centers are being named after Lewis Blackman, a 15-year-old who died at MUSC in 2000 after his nurses and resident physicians failed to recognize that he had developed a life-threatening perforated ulcer caused by the painkillers he was prescribed following an operation.
MUSC admitted liability for Lewis’ death and began working informally to help Blackman’s parents promote measures aimed at improving hospital staff communication and training at hospitals nationwide.
The patient simulation research and education center in Greenville is one of the first steps in achieving that goal in South Carolina, said MUSC president Dr. Ray Greenburg.
“In virtually every sector of the health care work force, there is a shortage of qualified people,” Greenburg said. “Our state’s network of simulation centers, working with medical colleges, nursing colleges and technical colleges, will elevate the quality of education and also the capacity of current programs.
“Having more doctors, nurses and technicians educated in this state-of-the-art manner will benefit the entire state of South Carolina,” he added.
Over the next two years, a network of six simulation centers will open with locations in Beaufort, Charleston, Clemson and Spartanburg, and with two in Columbia.
For now, however, the next step is measuring the impact the training is having in real-life situations at MUSC and at the teaching hospital partners of Health Sciences South Carolina, such as the Greenville Hospital System, Schaefer said.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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