Sara Neves, MD, Director of our Anesthesia Residency Program, received a two year $50,000 grant from the Foundation for Anesthesia Education and Research (FAER), “Developing Automaticity in Invasive Procedures: Novel Application of an Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) Simulator.”
Dr. Neves describes her work below:
“Invasive procedures such as central venous access(CVA) can have adverse events on patients that are expensive to treat. Anesthesia trainees perform these complex procedures in a dynamic and time pressured environment while maintaining patient safety. They currently train on mannequins for CVA, and mastery requires automatism of the technical aspects and ability to adapt to patient variability and environmental stress. Standard training methods address normal anatomy and are restricted by lack of non-clinical time for instructors. This study will use virtual reality (VR) based training to determine if this method can bridge gaps in current training and shorten the learning curve for beginners. We will randomize first-year anesthesia residents into two groups, VR training and mannequin training. Post-training, we will perform videotaped assessments in the OR and assess performance using checklists to determine whether VR training is superior, equivalent or less effective than mannequin training.”