The students will be upstairs in an hour, taking turns working on a life-like model of an ectopic pregnancy.
But right now, there’s a pig uterus, half a jar of blackberry jam, a tube of solidifying powder and a couple of syringes. Oh, and five doctors scrambling around a lab to make science happen.
The scrambler-in-chief is Brent E. Seibel, M.D., FACOG, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Florida College of Medicine-Jacksonville. Seibel orchestrates this Broadway-show-meets-biology-class madness one Wednesday a month, bringing students to the Univeristy of Florida Center for Simulation Education and Safety Research (CSESaR).
“Most of the stuff is not made commercially,” Seibel said, “so we have to wing it.”
And wing it he does.
Seibel’s become such a master in that regard that Kelly A. Best, M.D., FACOG, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, calls him “Dr. MacGyver.” That’s a nod to the resourceful 1980s television character known for solving complex problems with duct tape, a Swiss army knife and anything else he could patch together.
“As long as we have some spray glue, a screw driver and some scissors, we can make just about anything,” joked Best, program director of the obstetrics and gynecology residency program.
Seibel is one of the regulars at CSESaR, a state-of-the-art center spreading two floors of the former Methodist Hospital. The training center, also referred to on campus as the SIM Center, is the second-largest of its kind in the nation.
Seibel was at the forefront of the movement on the Jacksonville campus of physicians creating their own models and scenarios for students to work on. It has since spread to the point where senior simulation technician and skilled modeler Dan Torress makes molds of skulls, fingers and other body parts to be used in the center.
A few years back, Seibel created a foam model of a female abdomen with all of the body tissues to be used for students to practice a C-section. As soon as Bruce Nappi, administrative director of CSESAR, saw it, he went to the meat counter at Winn-Dixie and asked for some livers and kidneys. The end result is what Nappi calls a “hybrid simulator” – a plastic mannequin with animal tissue.
The center has a deal with a pig farmer to get the unused parts. The pigs are food grade, so there are no biohazards, and the organs as similar enough to human parts, Nappi said.
For Seibel this morning, he’s tweaking things a little – as usual. He’s using the pig uterus to simulate a fallopian tube. The uterus is bicornate – separated into several parts because pigs have multiple births.
That serves another purpose today – making enough so after the main demonstration, the class can break into small groups for some hands-on work and more people will get a chance.
The jelly and solidifying powder are placed inside and Seibel wants them to be the color and consistency of a blood clot.
For the main demonstration, two students are put on the spot in a former operating room that still has all the trappings of a hospital suite. The overhead lights are turned off and the students get to work, with their movements visible on a large television monitor for the class to see. The tubes have been attached to the inside of a life-like model – the top of the belly has been sawed off the pregnant mannequin Seibel bought on EBay for $80.
Seibel says he tries to use the center for scenarios that are relatively uncommon.
“Here we can stage it and everybody can see it, and even participate,” Seibel said. “It gets more exposure and, hopefully, if a situation comes up in a clinical setting they’ll at least know they’ve seen something like it before.”
During the session, Best is getting it all on video, which will be edited to include a voiceover and available for students to refer back to.
“That really appeals to this generation of learner,” Best said. “They don’t want to open a textbook and read a 1960s-style analysis of anything.”
Best says she knows the scrambling around the lab is paying off when she talks to former students who tell her they ran across a scenario that was “just like the SIM.”
All but the blackberry jam.
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