[Advanced patient simulators in pre-hospital trauma management training--the trainees' perspective]

Computerized Human Patient Simulators (HPS's) have been increasingly utilized to improve and assess medical performance during critical scenarios.

To evaluate the utilization of advanced HPS's for trauma management training in pre-hospital setting.

Four scenarios representing frequent critical events in the pre-hospital trauma treatment were developed using the METI (Medical Education Technologies Inc, Gainesville, Florida) and SimMan (Laerdal, Stavanger, Norway) HPS's. Reserve and regular army medical teams encountered the scenarios, which were all fully videotaped. The A-V recording of the training sessions was used in the debriefing session conducted by experts in trauma care immediately after the encounters. At the end of the workshop, all participants filled in a personal feedback questionnaire.

Sixty-six physicians and 16 emergency medical technicians participated in the study. Seventy-eight members (95%) of this group had participated in a previous Advanced Trauma Life Support course, 63 (77%) during the two years before the study. Only 6 (7.3%) of the participants treat trauma cases daily, and 7 (8.5%) more treat such cases at least once in two weeks. Seventy-two (82.8%) of the participants pointed out that the scenarios represent true trauma cases, and the same number reported that the video-based debriefing was excellent or very good. Sixty-four participants (78%) reported that the simulator training improved their decision-making, 54 (65.8%) claimed that it improved their manual skills, and only 47 (57.5%) believed they gained new knowledge. Eighty participants (97.5%) recommended simulator-based training as part of future training and performance assessment.

According to this preliminary subjective study, simulator-based training may be used as a tool in improving the competency of medical teams in treating trauma victims in pre-hospital settings.