Online Medical Training in Virtual Hospitals

Pulse at TAMU-CC

Pulse!!, the Virtual Clinical Learning Lab, was created and is hosted at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. It was designed for experiential training of healthcare personnel in a virtual environment, exposing learners to stressful medical situations with no risk to actual patients.

The simulator uses 3D gaming technology for its virtual environment, in which civilian or military medical personnel can receive training. About $15 million has been spent on developing the project, most of it through federal sources such as the Office of Naval Research. Dr. Claudia L. McDonald, Associate VP for Special Projects at TAMU-CC, is the principal investigator.

Other medical training programs using video game technology are either in place or under development, including an effort led by Western Governor’s University funded by the Dept. of Labor; TruSim’s triage game; and Full Spectrum Warrior, developed at USC for treating post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Full Spectrum Warrior Used to Treat PTSS

We’ve talked a lot about how the military uses video games for training and PR purposes. Here’s an interesting video over at The New Yorker about how a popular military video game is being used to treat post traumatic stress syndrome for soldiers returning from battle. The game is basically a modification of Full Spectrum Warrior, called Virtual Iraq. The basic idea with immersion therapy and other such treatments is to provide repeated exposure to the patient so that the negative reflexes become muted. I was particularly interested to note that smells can be introduced to the regimen, including diesel fumes. The olfactory glands are the biggest in the brain, and can trigger strong reactions and memories. The work is spearheaded by Albert “Skip” Rizzo over at USC.