A team of students from the School of Medicine participated in an emergency medicine simulation competition, SIM WARS, at the Great Plains Regional Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Meeting on Sept. 29 in St. Louis.
The contest puts four-person teams in an emergency patient scenario in which they must work together to assess the patient, intervene and manage a medical emergency working on a human simulator. Judges review teamwork, communication and clinical decision-making skills.
Teams from schools throughout the region compete against one another in a single-elimination tournament format. The School of Medicine team of Chirag Patel, MS 6, Samantha Novaha, MS 6, Andrew Spencer, MS 6, and Meena Subramanian, MS 5, won its first-round match and lost to the eventual SIM WARS champions in the second round of competition. Three students, Brandon Elder, MS 5, Will Enochs, MS 4, and Megan Litzau, MS 4, trained and prepared for the competition with the team and served as alternates.
“The experience was a success,” said Stefanie Ellison, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine and associate dean of curriculum. “The students said they learned a lot. They felt more confident in their diagnostic, patient management, and procedural skills.”
Ellison said students in the School’s Emergency Medicine Interest Group would continue to train throughout the year with the goal of entering two student teams in the contest at the 2013 Great Plains Regional Meeting. The UMKC School of Medicine and Truman Medical Center will be host to the 2014 meeting.
Students met twice a week with faculty and residents in the Youngblood Medical Skills Lab throughout August and September to practice and train for SIM WARS using the SIMman simulator and low fidelity procedural models. The training focused on case development skills, defining team member roles and responsibilities and the deliberate practice of patient management skills.
Throughout the training, students learned to manage adult and pediatric patients presenting with respiratory distress, traumatic injuries, sepsis, heart attack, and patients in cardiac arrest. They also learned procedural skills in airway management, Advanced Cardiac Life Support, intraosseous line placement, lumbar punctures and trauma care.
Sessions also included training experiences with EMT students, responding to an emergency, providing care and handing off that care to the UMKC medical students. Following the sessions, both medical students and EMT students gathered as a group for a discussion of student professional roles, case management and debriefing.
Emergency medicine faculty involved in the training for SIM WARS included Ellison, Jake Kesterson, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine, Emily Hillman, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine, and Jordana Kaban, D.O., assistant professor of emergency medicine. Residents who participated in the training included Bryson Bowman, Rob McCullough, Eric Canady, Scott Campbell, and James Hall.
