A surgical simulator for learning to operate.

Like the pilots, surgeons now have simulators to learn surgical practices.

To err is not synonymous with experience, says a popular proverb, and it becomes particularly important when learning to surgery. Historically, surgeons looking acquired skills, copying and operated patients, but this technique begins to be replaced with the virtual simulation. There is a tendency in the world to complement the tutored learning of residents with tools and technology to simulate real situations, so as to reduce the learning curve. There is already talk of a new paradigm in medical education, says Dr. Fernando Iudica, deputy chief of General Surgery Department, Hospital Universitario Austral.

The Service is testing a simulator donated by Johnson & Johnson Medical to teach laparoscopic procedures. With it you can practice from basic maneuvers to complete surgical practices such as cholecystectomies, colectomies, eventroplastias, gastric bypass, among others.

It's amazing, says Dr. Peter Valdez, a resident of surgery. On the screen in front of the machine which has seen an image of the gallbladder is very similar to that obtained during laparoscopic surgery in the operating room, and a variety of instruments that the resident moves and changes. Is playing with a sensor parts you want to remove the gallbladder as if it were a real body: The simulator reproduces a tactile feel, creates a resistance as if the same tissue. Feel when grasp the needle, when you pass the point badly.

One of the advantages of learning virtually, according to Dr. Valdez, is that it gives the possibility to see how situations would be resolved in the operating room during surgery, implement solutions and evaluate results, and do it as often as you like. Moreover, simulation training has the benefits of improving patient safety, decrease medical education costs and optimize the use of operating rooms.

Each physician that uses the simulator has a user and the computer stores all the actions it performs. It tells you how long it takes, voluntary and involuntary movements that did, the successes, risk situations, allowing the evaluation of the resident instructor and suggesting improvements. Then the system shows a ranking of all persons who entered the simulator to compare the data with other residents the same service, other specialties or other hospitals, says Dr. Gabriel Menaldi, chief resident of Surgery.

The Austral is directed toward developing an educational simulated in Medicine, which opens the door to one of the ways to acquire more advanced technical skills, says Dr. Iudica, who was at the Simulation Center Hospital University of Washington, one of the pioneers in the United States in developing this new form of medical education, with its director, Prof. Carlos Pellegrini.

He added that the simulation is applied not only surgery but also in other situations of everyday medical practice, with other instruments, inanimate models or dolls that are used, for example, in nursing education placement of roads, intubation of the airway auscultation and probes. In obstetrics, these same dolls obstetric maneuvers used to learn in childbirth, and caring for the baby and mother.