Regional Anesthesia Simulator for Training of Anesthesia Care Providers

The sophistication of weapons and the advances in protective armor in recent years has resulted in a change in typical injuries in combat situations. More and more soldiers sustain and survive catastrophic injuries to their extremities. Regional anesthesia is highly valuable in this context, providing effective pain management during medical evacuation, surgery and post-operative care. However, regional anesthesia is not a consistent part of typical medical training programs today. The goal of this effort is to develop a virtual training system to provide widespread and mass-deployable training to military anesthesiologists. The training system will initially target the infraclavicular brachial plexus block, which is a highly effective block to manage pain in traumatic injury to an upper extremity in combat. This block also has widespread civilian appeal due to its effectiveness in supporting orthopedic surgery to the hand, wrist, elbow and distal arm. Our training system will be easily adaptable to simulate other nerve blocks as well. We believe this training system will substantially improve the quality and accessibility of training to field personnel and has widespread applicability in the commercial space.