* * Anonymous Doc

Thursday, February 3, 2011

We had a simulation exercise today. Practice dealing with a (fake) patient who's quickly crashing, with a (fake) family member at her bedside fake freaking out and a (fake) intern making mistakes (part of the script) and nurses who need management and all sorts of other things-gone-wrong. Purposely designed to be a worst-case-scenario.

My patient died.

Most people's patients died, it's really not a big deal. Only a few people navigated through so that their patients survived. They say it's just practice, that it's not a reflection on whether we're good at this or not.

Still, it would have been nice for my patient to have lived.

2 comments:

  1. What an incredibly great idea! Seems like you could get people to pay extra for a hospital that advertised "doctor stress training program". I always think driver's licenses too should include a simulation where you fail so you know what having someone turn into your lane is like and that you won't survive if you don't work to improve.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kobayashi Maru Scenario! (Had to let my inner Trekkie out.) Seriously, you can learn a lot from these practice runs... the most valuable of which to me is, keep your cool. ACLS class is a lot like that too.

    ReplyDelete