Simulation as part of Rehabilitation

Abstract

During the last few years healthcare providers, especially doctors, are exposed to a growing number of violence expressions by patients and their families. Thus, it is of great importance to understand the complexity of the rehabilitation process of the victims. In May 2008 a senior urologist was assaulted by an angry patient. He was stabbed in the neck, back and left flank, collapsed and fractured his right elbow. Following an emergency operation and a long ICU stay it was evident that he was suffering from left sided motor and sensory spinal cord injury and from decreased range of motion in his right elbow/. After initial treatment he was transferred to the department of neurological rehabilitation. By the end of the rehabilitation period (5 weeks) he was able to walk and perform basic routine tasks and was discharged. During this process the patient expressed his will to resume his position as a urologic surgeon, which at the time seemed totally unrealistic. At this point came up the idea of a potential collaboration with the Israel center for Medical Simulation (MSR) in the process of the professional rehabilitation of this patient. MSR is one of the worlds' leading centers regarding simulation based training with a track record of numerous training programs and over 50000 trainees who had gone through its unique training process, especially designed for enhancing training experience together with highlighting safety issues, all through structured steps including pre task briefing, documentation and post task debriefing. The aim of this collaboration was to provide a safe environment for training and evaluation of his technical skills and assess his ability to return to work as an active surgeon.