It’s a crisp, winter’s morning as my colleagues and I stand by the roadside watching paramedics attend to the victim of a suspected heart attack. The patient is carefully strapped to a stretcher, transported into the back of an ambulance and then taken to the emergency room, where the paramedics seamlessly transfer him to the care of the nursing staff.
The tension is real. But for all the sense of urgency, the danger is not. Why? Because this is just a hyper-realistic simulation.
The Edge team is visiting a state-of-the-art simulated healthcare environment at University of Sunderland. Designed to provide students with realistic hands-on training opportunities, the university’s Living Lab is one of the country’s largest and best-equipped facilities of its kind. It includes a simulated training ambulance, a hospital ward, a community pharmacy, and a dental clinic – not to mention a highly-trained technical team working behind the scenes.
The lab allows students to practice their clinical skills using the latest technologies, in a safe, controlled environment, all guided by practitioner lecturers. This is the cutting edge of real-world learning.
