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UNIVERSITY OF FOGGIA - SKILL LAB

 Education and Advanced Medical Simulation Center

The Advanced Medical Simulation Center “Skill Lab” is located in the basement of the "Altomare" university campus in Foggia. It includes: a main hall where theoretical courses are held, as well as the debriefings at the end of the simulation activities; plus a simulation room, with its own control room, in which cameras were installed with the aim of performing a direct streaming of the simulation activity to facilitate the participation of the whole audience that will be present in the main hall. All course participants are involved from the beginning, sharing - the Contract, the initial briefing, the simulation test, and the final debriefing. The Center also includes two other rooms, used as student training rooms for learning technical skills or clinical skills. In these rooms there are mannequins suitable for the practice of nursing procedures such as venous cannulation and bladder catheterization, as well as more advanced clinical skills such as intraosseous access, thoracentesis, emergency cricotomy, and airway management which are relevant to clinical, emergency, and critical care areas.

The Center has the mission of facilitating the teaching and learning of those aspects of healthcare assistance that can currently be in short supply in hospital environments and that may present a risk for the patient if implemented by operators without adequate prior experience. For this purpose, it organizes and manages scientific and educational initiatives aimed at optimizing the professional skills of the health professionals involved in various ways in all phases of the clinical care processes of patients. The focus of the initiatives is both on technical and non-technical skills.
Medical simulation is a "training" system, based on the use of innovative training ways, inserted in the context of a completely realistic clinical pathway; this is a new pedagogical approach which is an important part of health education in many countries at the present time.. The primary objective of simulation is the safety of the patient and the clinicians, with the need to create a qualitative standard of care dominated by a culture of safety, through the improvement of technical operational skills and communication skills of physicians and other clinical figures. The faithful simulated reproduction of complex clinical situations and their management in team dynamics represents an optimal educational context to reduce the cognitive errors attributable to human factors. Human factors manifest themselves in an individual’s attitude to the transfer of technical knowledge in critical and / or emergency contexts, in an individual’s behavior and in interactions with the group.

This project is part of the education and training sector, but also that of public health, preventive and rehabilitative medicine.
This project involves students from various disciplines within the University of Foggia, including all Resident Physicians, who will complete and improve their professional preparation. In addition, the Center aims to train anesthesiologists and professional figures such as Emergency Room doctors and nurses. The teaching methods used include all the modern educational techniques applicable to adult pedagogy: lectures, small-group activities, divergent and convergent discussions, role-play, case studies, high-fidelity real scale simulation, task trainers, and assisted video debriefing.

The academic program for the 2019-2020 academic year includes:

• Simulation training for Medicine and Nursing students and for the Residents in Anesthesia and Intensive Care and of all the other professionals;

• Courses on the management of difficult airways;

• Multidisciplinary courses on critical patient management;

• Certified courses on emergencies in adults and children (BLS-D, ALS, EPLS);

The Center is organized according to a Constitution Act approved by the Departmental Council of the University of Foggia.
An official e-mail address for the center is currently active: simulationmedicaavanzata@unifg.it

Furthermore, since 2019 the Center has been officially registered with the SIAARTI National Register of Advanced Medical Simulation Centers