November 13, 2007
To Save a Second Life
Before practicing medicine on real patients, nursing students at Tacoma Community College, in Washington, get to practice on virtual ones in the computer-generated world of Second Life. John Miller, a nursing instructor at Tacoma, put on a live demonstration here at the League for Innovation in the Community College’s technology conference for an eager crowd.
It wasn’t quite as sexy as Grey’s Anatomy, but it worked. Mr. Miller played the role of the patient, directing his avatar to lie on a hospital bed in the virtual emergency room. The avatars of two of his students, both of whom were participating remotely, entered the room to treat the patient. Their voices were transmitted over the Internet for the audience to hear.
Mr. Miller told the two students he was suffering from chest pains. The students asked typical medical questions, inquiring how bad the pain was and whether he had a history of heart problems, while their avatars on the screen hooked up an IV and attached a blood-pressure cuff. Mr. Miller fed information to the program to provide the blood-pressure reading and an electrocardiogram readout.
“This is where I get worse,” Mr. Miller told the conference attendants. His avatar then went into cardiac arrest, and the students had to react by giving CPR and providing electrical defibrillation, all of which took place on-screen.
The demonstration ran into a few hitches, however. The patient’s heart rhythm did not immediately react to the defibrillation, as it was supposed to. And at one point the patient’s arm disappeared and one of the nursing students inadvertently flew out of the room.
But the virtual world gives nursing students a chance to practice their medical procedures on their own, Mr. Miller said. It doesn’t replace traditional learning or the live simulations at the college, but it does provide another method of practice.
“If you want to learn how to start an IV, for example, Second Life is probably not the best place,” Mr. Miller said. “But it is good for other things.” —Dan Carnevale
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Funny how concepts re-emerge. It is almost exactly ten years ago that the whole concept has been proposed in a conciderable detail in IEEE by a group from emergency medicine and engineering at the University of Michigan. They went off to do even more impressive and flawlessly working things that even today are still quite stunning. Most of the world around thought they were nothing but the alocal association of dangerous madmen.
— Dag von Lubitz Nov 13, 08:08 PM #
You forgot to mention the Ann Myers Medical Center in Second Life where medical students have already had some medical exercices with physicians from around the world.
http://scienceroll.com/2007/08/09/live-blogging-today-first-medical-simulation-in-second-life/
— Bertalan Meskó Nov 14, 02:24 AM #
The part of the simulation that I believe is important is the feedback time that the educator is spending with the learner. Technology can come and go but the time spent with the learner when it is planned well is at the core of quality experiences.
— Joan Morris Nov 14, 12:43 PM #
No, actually this sounds a lot sexier than Gray’s Anatomy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SEXY!
— Spanky Context Nov 15, 05:10 PM #
Same applies to law student sims for mock trials, e.g. a ‘flight simulation for lawyers.’
I wrote the positioning headline for The Interactive Courtroom (a Stanford law school sim that CLE group took to indiv. cd-rom vs. laser disc) “Eliminate the process of trial & error…Because there’s no room for error in a trial.”
This kind of virtual learning is ripe for refinement and expansion…
But you’re right, it all has to do with the sophistication level of the sim/technology and accuracy as to whether you use it clinically vs. informationally…(e.g. nurses flying out the room may not cut it if the technology platform can’t depict or support the sim accurately, but it’s STILL pertinent for a ‘what if’ presence to teach experientially and engage in higher learning.
High school students could even use this kind of sim on the teen SL grid to get them jazzed about career options, and/or decide whether they even LIKE it or not before forking out the big bucks for med/law school collegiate choices based on pursuit of a particular career path.
I’m going to pose this question to Barry at Global Kids Digital Initiative when I interview him for Shaping Youth.org because I’d like to hear what’s working, what’s not in the e-learning virtual arena, as well as where other Macarthur Foundation digital dialogues are headed…
Here’s a primer I wrote on Shaping Youth re: Teen SecondLife/virtual learning last season.
http://www.shapingyouth.org/blog/?p=195
— Shaping Youth Nov 19, 02:30 PM #
p.s. RWJF.org is calling for health/gaming/virtual proposals to further digital education, to the tune of $8.25 million in seed money…so if anyone has a health sim or game strategy ripe for e-learning now’s the time!
Here’s the link:
http://www.rwjf.org/programareas/pioneer/resources/product.jsp?id=23452&pid=1140
(we may even submit our own ‘Dare to Compare/Gross Out Game for Good Nutrition’ we developed at Shaping Youth and see if we can adapt it into digital parameters or SL…any techies need a thesis project? If so, ping me: amy at shaping youth dot org.
— Shaping Youth Nov 19, 02:44 PM #
Glad I had the opportunity to hear about this exciting development in medical education through a former colleage, an anesthetist. My research work in a school of distance education in Australia has emphasised the importance of learner engagement through the use of technology that integrates major sensory functions such as visual, auditory and kinesthetic. I am finding that such learning is ‘real’ learning (pun intended) because it results in real brain work – higher levels of ‘cognitive’ function and that equates to higher learning. I believe we’re on to something HUGE in terms of cognitive gain when we use this type of technology to more fully engage our students in their learning. Sure beats a mass lecture and we’ve all sat through too many of those.
— Megan Hastie Nov 30, 08:09 PM #