Regional Anesthesia Simulator for Training of Resident and Staff Pain Management Specialists

ToLTech will create a virtual workbench simulator presenting students with the ability to experience the look and feel of placing needles anywhere in one complete male patient and anywhere in the pelvis of one female patient. The simulator will allow for the selection of patient postures important for regional anesthesia procedures. The virtual patients will respond properly to nerve stimulation from electrical impulses and attenuation from drugs. They will adapt to present variation and morphologic differences. In addition, the virtual patients will present a significant variety of symptoms and complications. The simulator will be augmented with a mentoring program, the “Mentor,” that leads the student through specific cases from preparation through result. The Mentor will tightly couple all forms of electronic media with knowledge of any desired parameter from the simulator to adaptively guide and test the student. In addition to the haptically enabled virtual workbench, a non-haptically enabled simulator and mentor will be combined to produce a completely web-based teaching environment capable of projecting the knowledge and skills of a small group of experts throughout the world.