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Simulation Lab Creates Real-Life
Scenarios for New Med Students
Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine Students Benefit
from Simulation Training at Center for Learning and Innovation
Students in the inaugural class at the Hofstra North Shore-
LIJ School of Medicine have completed only one year of
study and already they have performed physical exams on
patients, cleared an obstructed airway and even assisted in
the birth of a baby at the CLI’s Patient Safety Institute. While none
of these procedures were carried out on real people, they certainly
had the look and feel of true-to-life situations.
“The exposure to simulation exercises, at one of the largest
institutes of its kind in the country, certainly gives our students a
wonderful opportunity to learn and strengthen their clinical skills
at an early stage in their education,” said Lawrence Smith, MD,
dean of the School of Medicine.
Simulation education is a bridge between classroom learning
and real-life clinical experience. CLI’s advanced learning facility
features state-of-the-art human-simulation laboratories with
digitally enhanced and controlled mannequins and partial-
and full-body task trainers, standardized patient rooms, and
endovascular simulators for interventionalists. CLI helps
students manage hypothetical patient cases as members of a
multidisciplinary healthcare team. The exercises are followed by
a debriefing with the med school faculty and the CLI staff, which
comprises a multitude of complementary health professions.
“Our students are exposed to these simulation exercises much
earlier than at most medical schools, which would normally cover
this material in the third year. This gives our students a great advan-
tage,” said Thomas Kwiatkowski, MD, assistant dean of education/
simulation and course director for CPR at the School of Medicine.
The high-tech, computerized mannequins at CLI are able to
mimic real patients and are able to talk and respond to the medical
students, who take vital signs and perform emergency procedures,
such as intravenous line insertion, breathing tube insertion
and medication administration. The mannequin patients are
controlled remotely by instructors at CLI, who can make them cry
out in pain, move about and even react to a student’s touch.
First-year medical student Niki Sheth called the CLI simulations
“very realistic” and the detailed debriefings very helpful.
“The debriefing was a great way of getting feedback,” she said.
“It also helps you reason out and explain why you took certain
actions during the exercise.”
According to Dr. Kwiatkowski, lessons taught in a realistic
simulation are retained better, due to the required active learning
and focused concentration, the experience’s emotional investment
and the direct association with the real world.
Medical students also train at the world-renowned Feinstein
Institute for Medical Research, the research arm of the health system.
To see a video of this story, go to: www.northshorelij.com/
NSLIJ/media-portal/homepage-video-channel/sim-lab.
Above: Margaret Delaney, a nurse educator at North Shore-LIJ’s Patient Safety
Institute, works with medical student Robert Metzler.
The New Standard 77