Medical Education & Research Institute

MEDICAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH INSTITUTE (MERI) EARNS ACCREDITATION FROM THE SOCIETY OF SIMULATION IN HEALTHCARE (SSH) AND FROM THE COUNCIL FOR ACCREDITATION OF HEALTHCARE SIMULATION PROGRAMS

MEMPHIS, TN (January 13, 2012)- On December 31, 2011, The Medical Education & Research Institute became the first program in Tennessee to earn accreditation in the area of Teaching/Education from the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) and from the Council for Accreditation of Healthcare Simulation Programs. MERI will be internationally recognized for this achievement at the 12th Annual International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) held on January 27, 2012 in San Diego. MERI is the only non-transplant whole body donor organization also accredited by the American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB). Accreditation is a voluntary test of the excellence of an organization. SSH promotes improvements in patient care and safety throughout the world through enhanced simulation technology, educational methods, health care student and practitioner continuing education outcomes assessment and research.

About MERI
The Medical Education & Research Institute (MERI) is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit medical training and research school located in Memphis, TN. The MERI supports hands-on training and research in all medical specialties for physicians, nurses, CRNAs, physicians’ assistants, paramedics, respiratory therapists, pharmacists, EMTs and other healthcare professionals and first responders from across the USA and around the world.

MERI’s state-of-the art “ Medical Simulation Center of Excellence” assists in the formulation and delivery of an educational strategy that supports enhanced patient caregiver competence and confidence by combining anatomic, physiology and simulation training. MERI is unique in that it can provide hands-on training and research using both anatomic donors and high fidelity human patient simulators.

Dr. Kevin Foley, MERI Medical Director and Board Chairman congratulates the MERI team on this important step in achieving MERI’s vision to “be the leading hands-on medical education and training institute in the world.”

For more information on the Medical Education & Research Institute (MERI), please call Diana Kelly at 901-786-8004 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

###

The University of Memphis (UM), Wright State University National Center for Medical Readiness (NCMR), and the Medical Education and Research Institute (MERI) has developed a training program to ensure effective interface between civilian and military operations in the event of a catastrophe requiring aeromedical evacuation. The civilian aeromedical evacuation sustainment (CAEST) training will complement existing military training and will prepare civilian nursing, allied health, public health, and emergency responder personnel to appropriately assess and prepare patients in pre-hospital austere environments and in hospital or other clinical patient collection sites for aeromedical evacuation. Going beyond traditional community first responder training and health system and community disaster management planning, we will address significant issues associated with operations and practice differences between civilian and military systems, such as communications, medical triage, and patient evacuation and transfer protocols and provide hands-on experiences via disaster exercises.

This medical readiness course is free to all healthcare providers, disaster management teams and hospital administrators both military and civilian.

The course is delivered at MERI both days. 8:00 am – 4:30 pm for the first day and 8:00 am – 12:30 pm on the second day. This is the link for registration website:

https://epay.wright.edu/C21810_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=4&SINGLESTORE=true

Suggested Prerequisites: ICS 100 & ICS 200
http://www.fema.gov/emergency/nims/NIMSTrainingCourses.shtm

Dates for the Civilian Aeromedical Evacuation Sustainment Training (CAEST) are listed below:

Course dates for 2011:

• December 6-7, 2011

Course Dates for 2012:

• January 10-11, 2012
• February 7-8, 2012
• February 21-22, 2012
• March 13-14, 2012
• March 27-28, 2012
• April 10-11, 2012
• April 24-25, 2012

Please contact Shirley R. Brown, RN,MSN, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 901-674-4560, for any questions.

Courtesy: Memphis Business Journal – by Karen Ott Mayer

Medical specialists, meet “Harvey,” a definite sign of the future.

Basically an electronic mannequin, Harvey can replicate 40 different heart and lung sounds, representing just one example of how technology is changing the medical education landscape and providing ground-breaking learning opportunities for students.

At the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, the Kaplan Clinical Skills Center unveiled a medical testing software system known as the B-line in December, which equips 12 patient exam rooms with videotaping and audio capabilities that is streamlining observation and grading. B-line is a common term used in medical education to indicate software-based simulation training.

Until the B-line, instructors shadowed students as they worked with standardized patient simulators, observing from the corner of the room.

“The students were very aware of the faculty in the room,” says Rob Shreve, associate dean for medical education in the UT College of Medicine. “Now, we can monitor what happens in the room and record it for later observation.”

The new technology allows greater efficiency when it comes to grading, providing reports and creating feedback for the students and the people who play the “standardized patient,” Shreve says.

With the student population at UTHSC increasing from 150 to 165, Shreve says the school plans to expand to 18 rooms in the near future. While all residents use the B-line, it is primarily the first- and second-year students who spend about five times per year at the center.

The cost of implementing a high-tech interactive learning environment is expensive, but the benefits are far reaching.

“We have to pay the patient actors, provide supplies and pay the staff,” Shreve says. “It’s resource intensive but this is far superior for teaching and assessment. In the long run, the cost savings is to hospitals and clinics when students know more.”

UTHSC has been working for the last six years to put the B-line in place and this type of technology is now becoming standard in medical schools across the country.

Shreve says UTHSC is currently in the midst of a comprehensive curriculum revision that will double the number of student visits to Kaplan as it will require clinical work as early as the first year of medical school.

One major goal of the new curriculum, set to roll out this fall and over four years, is to better integrate basic science and clinical training.

“Part of the mix is to create more active learning models like the B-line and the other is to increase the use of medical simulators,” says Shreve.

Thus, Harvey and other simulators enter the picture with the ability to replicate real-life scenarios.

In late January, UTHSC announced the receipt of a $2.9 million grant from BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Health Foundation which will be specifically used to build team-focused simulation programs and will help purchase new medical simulators, computers and software for training.

In step with providing world-class training, the Medical Education & Research Institute works closely with many health care specialists, including UTHSC residents.

“We need our technology and equipment to be state-of-the-art,” says Diana Kelly, MERI’s manager of institutional development. “We are currently working to enhance our video streaming and webcasting.”

The organization’s biggest move to recently expand its training and research capabilities involves a virtual simulator from ImmersiveTouch to enhance software for pedicle screw placement.

Local doctors Kevin Foley, Jeffrey Sorensen, Jon Robertson and MERI staff are working to make the software modules more useful to post-graduate students.

“Right now, these doctors are working to make sure the software ‘feels right’ in use,” Kelly says. “It’s all about the visual and the feel.”

The potential training use is powerful.

“This will allow surgical students to actually load in a specific patient’s information and practice before surgery,” Kelly says.

MERI expects enhancements to the software by the end of March and plans to demonstrate the software at the American Association of Neurologic Surgeons in April.

Training with technology reaches beyond a student’s first years. Last year, the MERI trained 11,000 medical professionals, including 500 local paramedics and was named a simulator center for excellence by the Tennessee Legislature.

“It’s exciting to see the light bulb go off in a student when they learn a new technique or procedure,” says Kelly.

According to the Center for Medical Simulation in Cambridge, MA, Medical Simulation is a situation or environment created to allow persons to experience a representation of a real event for the purpose of practice, learning, evaluation, testing, or to gain understanding of systems or human actions.

I recall my first week at the MERI (Medical Education & Research Institute). I was walking through our Simulation Center and heard iStan PediaSIM NOELLE® and Newborn HAL® breathing and saw their eyes blinking. Their rooms were and are still setup to look and feel just like a patient room at a hospital. Everything was just like you’d imagine it. Patient charts are on their room doors, white boards and vital sign monitors on walls, boxes of latex gloves and hand santizer are strategically placed as you walk in. It looks quite real, but still I was skeptical. How could these robot looking mannequins be of any real value to a surgeon or a nurse?

Let me tell you how wrong I was. Over the past 14 months I have seen MERI’s simulators save lives! Last November after attending a Difficult Airway Management course at the MERI, Donna Hunn, APN, a nurse practitioner at Methodist Le Bonheur successfully intubated and resuscitated a patient who had stopped breathing. “The intubation course that Methodist and MERI offered gave me invaluable hands on experience that cannot be duplicated with a mannequin,” said Hunn. “Had I not attended the course, I would not have had the confidence or skill to intubate the patient I found who was not breathing.”

Even more recently, through a Plough Foundation grant with matching funds from the Department of Homeland Security, MERI has teamed up with the Metropolitan Medical Response System (MMRS) to train first responding EMS and Fire Fighters in a simulated search and rescue bombing scenario. In this case the victims were MERI’s simulators that required assessment, triage and emergency care. “There are a whole lot of skill sets used,” said Joe Holley, Medical Director for the Emergency Medical Services in Shelby County. “They’re learning to manage a scene, make sure their own people are safe and conduct those live-saving interventions on victims.

MERI’s simulators are used almost daily to teach to teach patient safety, tough medical decision making, working in teams, and planned experience of rare events. Nursing students and physicians frequently get training on basic assessment, postoperative care, and skills practice in respiratory and pulmonary procedures. The simulators breath, bleed, urinate, have eyes that dilate, a pulse and a heartbeat. Those treating them have the power to save their lives or send them into cardiac arrest. The simulator’s human patient simulation technology not only mimics symptoms but also responds directly to treatment administered by trainees including oxygen, intravenous drugs and defibrillation. These complex machines can simulate hundreds of medical scenarios wirelessly from a computer.

Am I skeptical now? NO WAY!

Source: Commercial Appeal
By Toby Sells
Posted April 27, 2010

A package delivery driver was hit by a car last week. His heart stopped at the scene.

He was brought to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis, where he was shocked back to life with a defibrillator. His condition finally stabilized, but he needed an overnight stay in the emergency room.

Most of that really didn’t happen. The patient’s job and the car accident were made up and the “patient” wasn’t a real person, but rather a pricey, high-tech simulator.

The defibrillator shocks, however, were very real — part of a training regimen designed to help medical professionals sharpen their skills.

The simulator, one of five at Baptist’s new Simulation Center, is a SimMan 3G mannequin, a completely wireless, life-sized human model designed to mimic the symptoms of just about any injury or ailment that would befall a real person.

The mannequins can cough, cry, vomit, blink, urinate, talk, sweat, show a pulse, respond to medications, have overdoses and seizures and do just about anything else a real patient can do.

The 3,600-square-foot Simulation Center, scheduled to open May 13, will have five patient rooms equipped to simulate nearly every patient service area in the hospital — childbirth, pediatrics, critical care, general medical and emergency.

The center was established with an $815,000 grant from the Baptist Foundation, with the rest funded by the hospital. The total cost of the project was not disclosed.

Everything about the center, besides the mannequins, is real, including the room size and the medical equipment and supplies. So, when Baptist’s new nurses are training or its veterans are sharpening their skills, they are not allowed to use the “p” word.

” ‘Pretend’ is a word we don’t use in here,” said Judy Bedard, Baptist’s director of staff development and a registered nurse. “We want you to simulate everything.”

Bedard said Baptist began training on mannequins in 2004, but that the new simulation center is a major step forward in that sort of training.

“There is just a lot of complexity now in just taking care of the basic situations and equipment and medications,” she said.

The Medical Education and Research Institute has been using simulators for two years, said Elizabeth Ostric, its executive director.

“We see how much (the simulators) help students at every level, whether you’re an experienced caregiver or one who is learning to become a caregiver,” Ostric said. “We see that allowing people to demonstrate their competence increases their confidence.”

The institute teaches simulated courses on advanced life support, restricted airways and many courses for paramedics in Shelby County.

Baptist’s Bedard said simulators have been around for about 10 years and have been used for years by the military and in academia, but have just recently caught on in hospital settings.

She said each of the hospital’s new high-tech mannequins cost about $65,000.

“But what they provide in the learning environment, they’re worth much more than that,” she said.

On Friday, April 23, Congressman Marsha Blackburn visited the MERI school to learn more about simulated hands-on training for physicians, nurses,

CRNAs, nurse anesthetists, Paramedics, EMTs, and other healthcare professionals. She was able to observe a simulated OB event and learn about the various uses of simulated hands-on training for healthcare professionals.

She observed a Paramedic Disaster drill and saw first hand the advantages of simulated trauma scenarios and how realistic the training can be. She was able to talk with Paramedics and educators and learned how valuable hands-on simulated training is to improving their skills and their ability to positively impact patient safety.

Congressman Blackburn observed hands-on training labs with physicians using anatomic donors and heard first hand from training coordinators how valuable hands-on training is to ensure that physicians are trained properly to perform minimally invasive surgical procedures.

A big Thank You goes out to Elizabeth Lemmonds, Director of Communications and Marketing from The Leadership Academy, for writing such a great article featuring the MERI and the disaster training for EMS and Firefighter we’ve begun hosting.

Memphis’ own Medical Education and Research Institute (MERI) is launching disaster training for EMTs and paramedics in the greater Memphis area. Another strong testament to our local medical industry: our community’s emergency workers will be armed with leading edge disaster preparedness, thanks to a first-of-its kind training and research school:

The Medical Education and Research Institute announced the launch of EMS disaster training courses which will be offered to paramedics and EMTs throughout Memphis, Shelby County and its municipalities on six separate dates: The first course will be held on December 17, 2009 with the balance to follow in the first quarter of 2010.

The full-day courses will focus on applying emergency medical techniques and procedures in disaster situations as it relates to treatment of injuries including victims of a simulated office complex bombing. The courses will also focus on search and rescue and triage of simulated victims during the disaster. The course will be taught by experts in the field of emergency medicine and disaster preparedness.

“We feel that this is invaluable simulation training to offer to the Memphis and Shelby County Paramedics and EMTs, and we hope that it will be beneficial to the community in disaster relief and preparedness,” Diana Kelly, MERI Manager Institutional Development, said.

The new EMS disaster training courses are available in part as a result of a matching grant given to the MERI by the Plough Foundation to train paramedics and EMTs in Memphis, Shelby County and its municipalities. Partnering with this effort is the Department of Homeland Security Metropolitan Medical Response System Program administered through the Memphis Division of Fire Services that will also aid in funding the project.

Simulation training at the MERI was made possible by a $1 million grant from the Assisi Foundation, which funded the space, human patient simulators, and tools for the MERI Medical Simulation Center.

About the MERI The Medical Education & Research Institute (MERI) is a non-profit medical teaching and training school in Memphis, Tennessee, that conducts state-of-the-art, hands-on educational courses for physicians and other medical personnel from across the country and around the world. A first-of-its kind training and research school, the MERI’s use of un-embalmed anatomical donors and human patient simulators, offers physicians, nurses, nurse anesthetists, paramedics, EMTs and other healthcare professionals a unique, invaluable and authentic operating room training experience in which new techniques, technologies and devices perform just as they would on a living patient. Inspired in 1992 by Memphis neurosurgeon Kevin Foley, today the MERI educates more than 9,600 students each year from all 50 states and more than 27 countries from around the world.