Students can practice complicated medical procedures using this simulated patient RELATED VIDEO CNN's Marsha Walton reports on how the patient simulator helps train young doctors Windows Media 28K 80K

March 14, 1999
Web posted at: 11:42 a.m. EST (1642 GMT)

GAINESVILLE, Florida (CNN) -- It's a dream come true for medical students: a patient who will sit quietly through the most intrusive and delicate of treatments, won't sue if something goes wrong and -- in the worst case -- can be revived with the touch of a few buttons.

The "magic" patient is actually a machine developed at the University of Florida Brain Institute by anesthesiologist Michael Good and mechanical engineer Sem Lampotang.

The device simulates heart, lung and brain activity to train medical students, nurses, pharmacists and emergency medical technicians to deal with the most difficult patient crises without any of the risks.

The life-sized dummy encapsulating the device can be programmed to give a student all the signs of a 70-year-old man having a stroke, for example, or a 30-year-old woman with high blood pressure having a heart attack.

"The patient can get very ill and even die, and I can immediately reset the patient and ask the student to try again," Good said.

Monitors replicate real vital signs for students

"The best thing about it is, there is no risk to anyone," said University of Florida medical student Kevin Ammar.

At first, it's hard for some students to treat the model as a real patient, but that changes: one medical student even lost sight of the fact that the simulator cannot really die, Lampotang said.

"She quickly grabbed it, took the pulse, and said, 'Oh my God, he's arrested,' and then put the ambulo bag on and started ventilating the patient," he said.

Correspondent Marsha Walton contributed to this report.