Mobile lab brings hands-on

training and education to Muncie

Doctors and medical staff huddle around a computer monitor, watching intently and giving encouragement as one manipulates his simulator controls. The group isn’t trying out the latest video game, but rather taking advantage of cutting-edge training technology.

BMH played host to the Medtronic® Therapy and Procedure Training Center-Mobile Unit March 5-6. The unit is a rolling simulator of an actual cardiac catheterization lab that is one of three such trailers used by the Minneapolis-based company.

The simulator offered a radiation-free learning environment for visitors who might not otherwise have a chance to see the inside of a cath lab, said Glee Wills, operational manager, Cardiac Cath Lab. More than 180 visitors, comprised of various physician groups, residents, cardiac rehabilitation specialists and physiologists, and patients visited the mobile unit on its two-day stopover.

“Our goal is allowing our patients and hospital staff the chance to see, feel, and work with items and tools they might not work with ordinarily,” she said. “It is a real opportunity to see how these procedures are done in a controlled situation.”

Each workstation simulator presented a different patient scenario, based on age, anatomy, and cardiac history, and simulates an entire device-implanting procedure, either a pacemaker or implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD).

ICDs are implanted in patients that with dead heart muscle from previous heart attacks or cardiac disease, and can help prevent Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD), which kills more Americans each year than lung cancer, breast cancer, or AIDS combined.

“Visitors have been fabulous and have had great questions,” said Teresa Kovacs, Medtronic®’s trailer manager. “We’ve answered questions about pacemakers or ICDs, but we’ve also had patients from rehab come over and want to learn about their stents and other things, and we’ve been able to make them more aware of what they’ve been through.”

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