Dr. Sterling Williams, vice president of education, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, was in Temple on Friday to tour the facility and meet with Dr. Jose Pliego, Scott and White physician, assistant dean of academic affairs and medical director of the clinical simulation division.
Williams made the announcement of the local simulation center’s inclusion in the consortium during his visit.
“It is quite an honor for us to be part of the consortium,” Pliego said.
“It puts us on the map with other prestigious centers in the United States,” he said.
Pliego said Scott and White and A&M College of Medicine are excited about being able to contribute to the education of medical residents other than their own.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists provides education curriculum and evaluation tools for graduate medical education, Williams said.
Residents now have fewer hours of training, because of a legal mandate, and a new way of providing the same quality of education had to be established without working residents the usual 100 hours a week, he said.
Simulation systems are now being looked at as a way to offer high quality education and teach safe clinical practices, Williams said.
“What we’re trying to do is incorporate computerized simulation systems into residency education,” he said.
Initially, Williams said he was considering simulators that could be moved throughout the country.
“That idea is fraught with all kinds of problems,” he said.
Simulation centers were being built with dedicated faculty and administrators, Williams said, and all that was required to make use of the centers for graduate education was getting the residents to the centers.
Williams has visited numerous simulation centers and has chosen nine of them that have met the high standards established for consortium members.
The goal is to develop residency education to improve surgical skills.
“So before residents go into the actual operating room, they have already developed a modicum of surgical skills,” Williams said. “Patient safety will be served because the residents will be better technicians.”
Though each center may have some different learning opportunities, depending on the facility and the types of training mannequins available, the nine centers will teach a standardized curriculum and techniques, he said.
Eventually, Williams said he would like to have about 24 simulation centers geographically distributed throughout the county, so no single simulation center is overburdened and no resident will have to travel too far.
Williams said the plan is for the consortium to develop the curriculum and then let everyone know what’s available. It will be up to each residency program whether to participate.
The program, he said, will eventually be used to validate whether training doctors at simulation centers actually improves patient care.
“We think it’s extremely valuable, but no one has proven it,” Williams said. “We have to document through research that this actually accomplishes what we’re after.”
The nine simulation centers selected are affiliated with academic medical centers and are accustomed to research, he said. Those centers will determine what research will go on, what papers are published and what studies will be used to determine if training at a simulation center achieves its goals.
At the present, the program is concentrating on residency education because it’s a controlled group, Williams said.
“I’m 100 percent convinced that if we do this well then everyone will be interested, for all the right reasons, in simulation systems for lifelong learning,” he said. “If we do this well, everyone will pay attention.”
The nine centers selected to begin the planning process for the program will be the architects, Williams said.
“Hopefully this will be recognized as one of the best things we’ve done in education in a long time,” he said.
njwilliams@temple-telegram.com
