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Robotic Patients Used to Help Train Doctors
skeletor935 writes "Due to the increase in the number of medical students in Mexico, medical schools have turned to the use of robotic patients to assist in training." From the article: "The robots are dummies complete with mechanical organs, synthetic blood and mechanical breathing systems."
An image of one of these robotic patient training kits can be found here.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I smell an opportunity to commercialize this "mechanical organs" technology with another well-known product. Oooh la la!
Zoidberg: Oh, the hypochondriac's back. So what is it this time?
Fry: Well my lead pipe hurts a little-
Zoidberg: That's normal. Next patient.
A robot may not injure a human or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm, even if that human has jabbed him repeatedly in the arm with a practice needle
a robot must obey orders given to it by a human, except where it would conflict with the first law, and except when that order is "Hey, get better quick before the professor comes back, and then say I did it!"
A robot must protect itself, as long as that protection doesn't violate either the first or second law. Hmmm, this one sort of limits how many robots will be in the ICU in the first place eh?
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
The robot was used for instruction for surgeons and anaesthesiologists.
"Excuse me, Doctor, but I think you meant to clamp here, and clip there. There you go, now you got it. Oh, by the way, tell the anaesthesiologist that I could really use some more anaethesia. Other than that, doing good."
Why are they using our politians? They should use their own.
Train Doctors?
Do you see what I see!!
Since we're discussing medicine in México, I would like to chip in my two pesos about the experience of receiving medical care in México versus getting care in the US; I got care in both countries in the last month or so.
In México, the care I received was excellent. After being sick for three days with Montezuma's Revenge, my friend's cousin, who happens to be a doctor came by, asked me a number of questions in Spanish, looked me over, and gave me some antibiotics to stop the sickness along with a couple other medicines to help me. The examination and care was done very well. Total cost: $25 for house call doctor visit, $5 for medicines. By the evening, I felt great again.
When I came back to the US, I saw a doctor through Kaiser. The nurse treated me like a mechanical doll instead of a person. The doctor was good, but only very briefly examined me before telling me I had a virus and that there was basically nothing they could do. The cost for this care $25 co-pay, plus $200 a month to be on insurance to get this kind of care.
In México, they don't have to worry about malpractice lawsuits. A person can be a full-up doctor at 26 years of age (such as the doctor I saw down there). Here, one has to be about 30 before they can be a doctor; they spend more time in medical school and less time getting real-world hands-on experience. Most drugs can be obtained without prescription (the exception being addictive drugs like valium and what not)--this causes people to get antibiotics when they have viruses, unfortunatly.
Which one is better? I prefer the Mexican system; less HMO BS and more real care.
The article is, of course, extremely light on details. The only difference between this and "SimMan" which has been in use for years and years seems to be the inclusion "artificial blood," whatever that means.
Also, this is pretty funny: "I would feel nervous if this was (a) real patient," said Mendoza after drawing blood from a plastic arm.
"With this (dummy patient) I can practice many times."
Because jabbing a needle into plastic is just like jabbing a needle into human flesh.
The sorts of simulators are very useful for simulating emergency situations, but aren't really suitable for things like surgery. It's nice to have the motions of checking pulses, barking commands for IVs and epinephrine, and setting up a defibrillator down pat for when a patient is crashing before your very eyes. Since there is very little actual manipulation of the patient, this is exactly for what we use SimMan (cardiac arrhythmias, emergency intubations, and the like). The monitor values (projected on a screen for all to see) are changed by a preceptor as you do things like move from nonrebreathing masks to bag mask ventilation or add a second IV. I just don't see how this would be used to do surgical simulation at all.
Doctor, He's Crashing!
Give him 5 mg of ativan, start an epi drip, and somebody get me an emergency boot disk, STAT!
Sigs are for lusers. Hey! wait a second...