The Multidisciplinary Simulation Center at Mayo Clinic's campus in Rochester, Minnesota, opened in 2005 and comprises 11,500 square feet of dedicated experiential learning space.

The facility is available to all members of the health care team and to students in all Mayo Clinic schools and programs. Under special arrangement, learners external to Mayo Clinic can also participate in training. Medical simulation training is often team-based, and multidisciplinary whenever possible.

Standardized Patient Program

The center features an integrated Standardized Patient Program with approximately 100 actors who simulate the roles of real patients. Actors can be paired with high-fidelity simulators during scenarios, or may work independently to portray patients with any number of health concerns.

The actors give consistent and pre-defined accounts of their conditions and answer a full spectrum of questions about themselves. Standardized patients also help provide feedback to learners in debriefing scenarios.

Task training rooms

Many kinds of procedural task trainers are available for training novice and advanced learners. Hybrid simulation programs can combine a part-task physical trainer with a live standardized patient actor, and these programs are becoming increasingly common.

For example, part-task trainers for suturing deep cuts or lacerations consist of special soft plastic material strapped on the arm of a Standardized Patient Program actor, along with appropriate clinical draping material. The student not only has to perform the skill elements of sewing up the wound but also, as in real life, has to do so while interacting with the patient and attending to his or her needs.

Virtual reality and visualization

Virtual reality is often used to create advanced part-task trainers for complex medical procedures such as minimally invasive surgery or catheter-based procedures. Virtual reality entails procedures in which the clinician uses artificial extensions of the hands (laparoscopic surgical instruments) to interact with an image on a screen. For example, learners may virtually operate a camera in laparoscopy or the X-ray fluoroscopy in the catheter lab.

Training rooms

• Cullinan and Falcon-Cullinan emergency room suite
• Intensive care unit suite
• Jilk endovascular suite
• Operating room suite
• Up to 10 patient rooms that can be customized as inpatient or outpatient clinical settings

Equipment

The Multidisciplinary Simulation Center at Mayo Clinic's Rochester campus uses many types of clinical equipment to closely mirror the clinical environment. Equipment includes:

• Advanced airway trainers
• Anesthesia machines
• Birthing simulators
• Bronchoscopy equipment
• Cardiac perfusion simulators
• Defibrillators
• Endoscopic trainers
• High-fidelity manikin-based simulators
• Laparoscopic trainers
• Mechanical ventilators
• Obstetric and pelvic simulators
• Ophthalmology surgical trainer
• Robotic surgical trainers
• Urologic surgical simulators

High-fidelity manikin-based simulators

The center's high-fidelity manikin-based simulators use computer controls to manage and control the physiological appearances of patients undergoing health crises. These simulators can replicate:

• Spontaneous breathing and the ability to breathe for the patient with a bag or ventilator
• Real-time display of electronically monitored information, such as electrocardiogram and oxygen saturation
• Pulse, heart sound, breath sound, pupil size and pupil response to light
• Obstruction of various parts of the airway