At the beginning of the pandemic, Providence Health Care’s (PHC) clinicians at St. Paul’s
Hospital faced a growing problem. Patients were arriving daily with severe breathing difficulties, many needing breathing assistance from a procedure to insert a tube into the throat, called intubation.
Adding to the complexity, many of the patients were frail and infectious with COVID-19. Soon, the trained clinicians couldn’t keep pace with the demand for this life-saving procedure. They turned to medical simulation, using a “smart” mannequin to train additional health providers to become expert at the skill — learning in full personal protective equipment.
A protracted emergency like COVID-19, laid bare the need for expanded capacity and options for experiential training across the health care system. This became evident in central hubs like Vancouver, but also exposed the critical need to create remote experiential learning opportunities, particularly for under-served areas such as rural towns and villages and Indigenous communities.
Read From Mannequin to Metaverse: Advancing experiential health care training to learn more about the opportunities for immersive training – and beyond.