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Hospital facility makessurgery training a breeze

An intern at National Taiwan University Hospital in Taipei practices surgical techniques with a training machine yesterday. PHOTO: CHANG CHIA-MING, TAIPEI TIMES

Two large, red Chinese characters for "failure" flashed onto the screen of the computer-based bronchoscopy stimulator at the National Taiwan University (NTU) Hospital's new Minimally Invasive Surgery Training Center. A young trainee doctor had botched an insertion of an endoscope into "Steve's" lungs.

"Steve is the easiest of our three virtual patients," said Chen Jin-shing (陳晉興), the assistant professor of surgery at NTU Hospital, yesterday. "John coughs much more and Cathy is in the middle."

Chen was demonstrating how the unit might be used as a training tool for nervous trainee doctors and joked that "I can give a `successful' demonstration too."

"Right now, students learn how to do a bronchoscopy by performing it on live patients, with seasoned surgeons standing close by to take over if things go awry" Chen said. "Now they will be able to make mistakes without compromising the well-being of their patients."

According to Chen, the bronchoscopy stimulator was developed at NTU Hospital, which eventually hopes to put it into mass production for use in other training institutions.

The bronchoscopy stimulator is one of the many new teaching tools at the training center designed to give doctors hands-on surgical and medical experience before they have to work on a real patient.

The center was funded in large part by Lin I-sou (林義守), the founder of the E-United Group (義聯集團).

Elsewhere in the newly unveiled center are two fully-functional surgery rooms where students can learn from surgery demonstrations and practice different skills at dedicated work stations.

Keyhole surgery is a speciality at the facility. Keyhole surgery, which involves procedures that are performed via a small opening in the skin, heals faster and is less prone to infection than traditional surgery.

However, relying on an endoscope for visual information while manipulating organs with long-handled tools is a delicate, fiddly task that requires lots of practice.
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