TOTBV-02: TUBES, WOUNDS, AND DRAINS: A SIMULATION BASED CURRICULUM FOR THE MEDICAL STUDENT SURGICAL CLERKSHIP
Colleen Flanagan; University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, College of Medicine/Department of Surgery
What problem in education is addressed by this work?:
With chronic wounds affecting approximately 6.5 million patients in the United States with treatment costs of $25 billion annually, a burden that is expected to grow with the aging population and rise in obesity, the need for medical training for wound care is paramount. Acute wound care is also critical during the management of patients on surgical and trauma services with this responsibility quickly falling to junior level residents and medical students at medical centers. Additionally, medical students are often exposed to patient care devices such as surgical drains and chest tubes exclusively on their Surgery Clerkship, and formal instruction on these is beneficial to aid students in contributing to the team's workload.
Describe the intervention:
Our third year clinical skills wound care curriculum, developed and led a surgical faculty member at our institution, is engineered to take place at the beginning of each studentâs surgical rotation in order to maximize retention, clinical significance, and hands-on expertise teaching. This 3-hour simulation session includes a lecture on surgical wound care supplies and mannequin-based simulations of drains, chest tubes, and wound vacs taught by surgical faculty, surgical residents, senior medical students, and wound vac technicians. Since the initiation of the wound care simulation session in early 2018, our students have reported significant increases in confidence in performing surgical wound care by themselves (p<0.001), in addition to increased knowledge of chest tube care, surgical site drains, wound vacs, and wound care supplies.
Describe how this intervention could be applied at other institutions. Please specifically comment on identified barriers that could exist and how they could be overcome:
With our short simulation session curriculum material focused on giving an overall introductory representation of wound care supplies and various equipment, education can be delivered universally by surgical faculty and fit relatively easily into medical student didactic lessons during the surgical clerkship. Barriers to implementing this curriculum include access to campus simulation labs with accessibility to common wound care supplies, chest tube mannequins, and wound vac machines. This may be overcome with dedication to collecting expired or dysfunctional supplies and by instruction of chest wall simulators.