WITH ODU COLLABORATION, VIRTUAL TRAINING CAN OCCUR AT EVMS

The real and the virtual meet every day at the Sentara Center for Modeling and Simulation at EVMS. Close to completing its first full year of operation, the center allows would-be doctors, physician assistants, nurses and other health professionals to perform procedures in a simulated setting before taking on the real thing.

During the past decade, there's been huge growth across the country in this type of center. Simulation dollars once rooted in military efforts are shifting toward the health care and emergency fields. The push for less medical testing and practice on animals has created a need for lifelike models. And more attention is being paid to safer and more cost-effective procedures as health care costs swell across the country.

In Hampton Roads, EVMS has been working closely with Old Dominion University to create medical modeling and simulation expertise. The two schools received state and federal funding for these efforts, most recently a $600,000 grant from the state's Office of Economic Adjustment.

Simulation centers, here and across the country, make use of a combination of tools:

- Full-size mannequins that breathe and blink and sweat and bleed and seize and go into cardiac arrest. - Partial-body mannequins, such as an arm that students can use to practice drawing blood.
- Standardized patients - real people who are trained to mimic health conditions.
- Virtual reality rooms where "avatar" doctors and nurses bark instructions and vital signs while students operate on mannequins.,br/>

Beyond these tools, Rick McKenzie, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at ODU, said the school is also working closely with EVMS to develop something called the "Virtual Pathology Stethoscope."

The stethoscope will substitute abnormal sounds for healthy sounds to mimic different medical conditions as a student moves the device across the body. The sounds of the stethoscope, which are recorded from actual patients with various diseases, will be used on standardized patients.

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