365 days of SIMU. Simulation Centre at FM MU celebrated its first birthday

From this semester, teaching in SIMU will take place under the newly established Department of Simulation Medicine of FM MU. In the selection procedure, professor Petr Štourač was elected as its Head. Jan Dvořáček was appointed as the Executive Director of the Simulation Centre.

The celebration of the first year of teaching in the Simulation Centre, together with a tour of the building, took place on 15^th September 2021. The guests were greeted by the Rector of the MU Martin Bareš and the Dean of the FM MU Martin Repko. President of the Society in Europe for Simulation Applied in Medicine, Marc Lazarovici, also accepted the invitation to Brno, appreciating the modern premises and the quality of teaching itself. Among the guests were the Dean of the First Faculty of Medicine of Charles University, prof. Vokurka, the coordinator of inpatient intensive care during COVID, doc. Vymazal, former Chair of Healthcare and Social Care Union of the Czech Republic, Jiří Schlanger and many more. Numerous delegations represented not only the First and Second FM CU, but also the Hradec Králové, Plzeň and Ostrava Faculties of Medicine. Participation of the people who stood by the project from the first minute, such as Ing. Blažková, former Vice-Rector doc. Pitrová, Mgr. Póč, current Faculty Bursar Ing. Sellner and others, was crucial.

As the Dean of the FM MU Martin Repko emphasised, SIMU is a unique project, which opened up completely new opportunities for the education of future doctors and healthcare professionals: “In the premises of the training hospital, students can learn the best way to treat a patient before actually getting to treat sick people. In addition, they can try solving different types of diagnoses and situations that they would not typically encounter in practice. The importance of SIMU and simulation medicine in the past semester was further amplified by the pandemic of coronavirus, which reduced the capacity of hospitals. Contact with the real patient remains essential for teaching, however, thanks to SIMU we can prepare students for real situations better and in a world’s top level.”

According to the Head of the new Department of Simulation Medicine Petr Štourač, expansion of the possibilities of educating the pedagogical staff and lecturers of simulation medicine is planned. “SIMU has moved education of medical students into the new millennium. Moreover, last year showed us that there is a great interest in the courses even from the ranks of professional doctors and healthcare professionals, who want to train different types of situations without risking the health of a patient. Each simulation has a specific scenario and there is a professional lecturer present, who will discuss the whole situation with the participants with the help of a video recording.”

The world-recognised method of Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) should also ensure a high quality of teaching at SIMU.

The five-storey Simulation Centre mimics the environment of a real hospital, it is equipped with the most modern medical equipment and most advanced types of simulators. For example, there is seventy simulators for Dentistry lessons. Others include mannequins of paediatric and elderly patients as well as pregnant women.

On the ground floor of the centre, there is an emergency room with three monitored beds, CT and a fully equipped ambulance. The hospital floor has operating theatres, intensive care units and rooms for teaching using virtual 3D simulations. At the roof of the building, there is a heliport.

The construction of SIMU took two years and cost almost a billion CZK including all the equipment. The construction of the Simulation Centre is a dominant part of the Strategic Education Investment Project SIMU+ at Masaryk University funded from the Operational Programme Research, Development and Education.

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