By Stephanie Stephens
Multimedia content provider
Her eyes blink, her pupils dilate and, yes, doctors, she has a pulse. She also can have a seizure and complications giving birth – on command. Her name is NOELLE® and she's one very busy childbirth simulator at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Under the direction of John Vozenilek, M.D., director of Simulation Technology and Immersive Learning, an eager group of field trip attendees in mini-med school at Health Journalism 2010 helped deliver her "baby," aided by silent commands from a nearby wireless PC.
"It's robust team training, a clinical experience conducted in a safe environment, where tasks are replicated and played back with expert feedback from faculty," Vozenilek said. The center, he explains, is designed to advance medical practice and patient care by designing, implementing and researching the best techniques in experiential medical education.
Journalists not only got to walk through emergency scenarios with NOELLE and infant, but their calm and cool were further tested in a high-fidelity simulation that involved rescuing a patient from a near-fatal asthma attack. Next, they cautiously replaced a ventral venous catheter under ultrasound guidance and revived a patient from cardiac arrest while demonstrating aptitude in CPR and automatic defibrillation – all in a morning's work for these conference participants, who surely felt ready for their close-ups on "Grey's Anatomy."
Communication and teamwork skills sharpened in the hall outside the row of treatment rooms play an important role in the efficacy and safety of what's being delivered, said Vozenilek. In terms of what's next in this quickly-evolving environment, he predicted the advent of virtual reality, reinforcing the fact that medical education is no longer conducted only with books and in laboratories.
The medical future is now
Cognizant of "how far we've come" in delivering and sustaining the lives of premature infants, inquisitive journalists next visited the state-of-the-art, 86-bed Renee Schine Crown Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Northwestern Memorial's Prentice Women's Hospital. With noise-reducing floors as part of its overall effort to keep tiny babies healthy and happy, the secured Level III unit features special warming beds, pulse oximeter monitors, umbilical venous or arterial catheters and nasogastric tubes in its life-saving arsenal. The NICU, quiet and welcoming, meets the needs of about 1,600 premature or seriously ill newborns each year. Families can avail themselves of an ongoing support program.
The journalists' third stop was box lunch and a comprehensive discussion of the role of genetic medicine as contemplated by leaders of the NUgene Project at the Center for Genetic Medicine. Their goal, according to Wendy Wolf, Ph.D., director and co-investigator and colleague Maureen Smith, M.S., G.G.C., clinical director, is to apply genetic discoveries to the reality of achieving better health care, while understanding the human genome sequence.
The NUgene project is a biobank repository – one of the first in the United States – of genetic samples and electronic health records from almost 10,000 volunteers who are patients at Northwestern-affiliated hospitals and clinics. Interest in this field remains high, since eight out of 10 major diseases have a genetic component, the speakers said. DNA sequences of any two people are 99 percent identical, a reminder that we're not all that different.
Rehab and robots
Rounding out the day, the group visited the world's largest rehabilitation research and development center of its kind, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where repair, regeneration and recovery of brain, spinal cord and musculoskeletal functions are job one. RIC's primary research centers include the Center for Bionic Medicine, the Center for Clinical Research and the Center for Rehabilitation Outcomes Research.
In the robotics lab, researchers demonstrated the interface of power wheelchairs with computer games to emulate a "natural extension of the body," and spoke of future three-dimensional robots. Even the home video game Wii finds its place in these halls, where the smallest movement of a patient undergoing rehab can make a big difference in that person's sense of accomplishment. Fun is an added benefit.
RIC's neuralplasticity laboratory is a place where electric currents are revered for their power to help humans. James Stinear, D.C., Ph.D., told the group that "some people have a large stroke and never know it." Neuroplasticity is defined as an undamaged area of the brain taking over from a damaged area, an increased flow of signals or redirected signals in existing connections between nerve cells in the brain, or growing new connections or new nerve cells in the brain. Possible? Absolutely.
Finally, in the Center for Bionic Medicine, lofty and attainable goals include greater, more natural control of prosthetic devices for amputees, said Blair Lock, MA and lab manager. Journalists were transfixed by charismatic amputee Amanda Kitts, age 41, of Knoxville, TN, who lost her arm four years ago in a vehicle accident. Able to move hand, wrist and elbow of a rewired prosthetic arm simply by thinking the movements, she said her new limb "feels like a part of me." It's thanks to a technique called targeted muscle reinnervation in which nerves are "doubled back" during surgery, allowing electrical impulses carrying control information to resume their former jobs.
