Veterinary anaesthesia from theory to practice: use of a SimPad PLUS as a learning tool for veterinary students

Innovative project idea

Medical simulators have become an essential and unique part of medical training for students/ doctors before being exposed to actual patients in stressful situation. Unfortunately, veterinary medicine does not include this kind of training, despite the facts that the majority of vet. students have an opinion that they lack clinical experience once they graduate and find themselves suboptimal clinically trained/confident to treat actual patients. Introducing a training with a simulator would provide students with better preparedness and experience, which is essential for good clinical practice.

Benefits for students and teaching at UZH

Anaesthesia simulators provide real-time training, which enables trainees to participate in interactive problem solving of clinical scenarios - they analyse the clinical situation, choose the treatment and observe the consequences of their choice. In this way they gain cognitive and psychomotoric skills, also for rare severe pathologies, to which they might be rarely exposed. This approach enables them to become familiar with clinical management, stressful situations and implement their theoretical knowledge into practice before actually being in front of the patient.