Campus Life
UCSF Fresno Clinical Skills Lab Expands and Upgrades to Provide State-of-the-Art Training for Learners
Amy Kwok, MD, MPH, FACS, co-director of the UCSF Fresno Clinical Skills Lab, director of Surgical Simulation Education, UCSF associate clinical professor of surgery at UCSF Fresno, associate program director of the UCSF Fresno General Surgery Residency and medical program director of the UCSF Fresno Acute Care/Trauma Surgery Physician Assistant Residency Program. Dr. Kwok graduated from the UCSF Fresno Acute Care Surgery Fellowship in 2012, before joining the faculty. “We just did our first standardized physical exams for our third-year medical students,” Dr. Kwok said. “It was the first time we were able to do the exams in our simulation center. Normally, we have had to go to UCSF.” The UCSF Fresno simulation lab boasts three new high-fidelity mannequins, in addition to multiple new task trainers that provide interactive learning opportunities for medical students, as well as training experiences for residents and fellows. “They (mannequins) are more realistic for the learner to really engage in a patient simulation,” said Lee Hagerty, medical simulation educator.
UCSF Fresno enhanced learning opportunities for medical students and trainees this past year with improvements to the Clinical Skills Lab, which provides a safe environment for students, residents and fellows to learn and practice procedural skills, sharpen decision-making processes and build team leadership abilities. The installation of a new SimCapture™ learning management system now provides advanced education, assessment and training experiences. “This state-of the-art system revolutionizes the way we use simulation for Graduate Medical Education experiences. It allows us to record each training session from multiple camera angles and include data from patient monitors. These recordings can then be reviewed and debriefed by faculty and trainees,” said Jessica Fujimoto, MD, co-director of the Clinical Skills Lab, director of Emergency Medicine Simulation Education and clinical instructor of Emergency Medicine at UCSF Fresno. Dr. Fujimoto graduated from the UCSF Fresno Emergency Medicine Education Fellowship program in 2020, before joining the faculty. The SimCapture™ learning management system also gives medical students in the San Joaquin Valley Program in Medical Education (SJV PRIME) an assessment equitable to that at the UCSF School of Medicine. “We are able to recreate the same experience if they had tested up at UCSF,” said 30
The new mannequins have also been used in community outreach, helping educate Emergency Medical Services (EMS) community partners at American Ambulance and to educate local high school students in the Doctors Academy program, Dr. Fujimoto said. Moreover, simulation education at UCSF Fresno has responded to significant changes due to COVID-19 and the dramatic effects to clinical experiences during the pandemic. Faculty have relied more heavily on simulation to anchor their curriculum for students and trainees, Dr. Fujimoto said. Scenario-based training sessions continued to be offered on site, with reduced group sizes to allow social distancing while providing learning opportunities and time to bond with classmates. An expansion into adjacent space doubled the size of the Simulation Center to allow dedicated simulation rooms for Emergency Medicine/Surgery/ICU scenarios separate from OB/GYN/Pediatric scenarios. “It’s really quite amazing how much we have expanded,” Hagerty said. Drs. Fujimoto and Kwok said the dramatic changes to the Clinical Skills Lab revolutionizes the way simulation is used in the training of medical students, residents and fellows, helping propel UCSF Fresno’s mission to train the next generation of high-quality physicians for the region and to improve the health of the San Joaquin Valley’s rapidly growing population.
