The steadfast, consistent support of the Tompkins Trust has allowed us to grow and change our curriculum in such a way that we are at the forefront of helping students prepare for day one ready skills. The Sim Lab has had a significant positive impact on students’ confidence, competence, and overall abilities. The simulation center would not be what it is today without their initial support and championship over the years.
New Grant Program Funds Faculty and Staff Designs for Simulation Models
Edna H. Tompkins Veterinary Medical Simulation Grant will bring new teaching models to the Simulation Laboratory
On any given day in the Joseph Kelley, D.V.M. Simulation Laboratory (Simulation "Sim" Lab), students might be splinting a fracture on a model of a small ruminant, performing CPR on a canine mannequin, or suturing fabricated skin. The Simulation Lab is an integral part of the curriculum for students at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University (Cummings School), as they gain hands-on experience practicing surgeries and procedures before entering clinics. The learning in the lab has been so impactful that faculty often request new skill-specific models—models that don’t currently exist in veterinary medicine.
In an innovative approach to broaden the offerings of the Simulation Lab, the inaugural Edna H. Tompkins Veterinary Medical Simulation Grant enables faculty and staff to design these teaching models with dedicated funding and resources. Cummings School partnered with Tufts School of Engineering and Brandeis University to bring in engineering students to build the winning designs.
“The Simulation Lab is a wonderful place for students to practice skills and get valuable feedback from our instructors,” says newly appointed Simulation Education Lead, Dr. Ariana Hinckley-Boltax (she/her), assistant teaching professor in the Department of Comparative Pathobiology at Cummings School, who came up with the idea of the grant. “The beauty of the Simulation Lab is that we reduce reliance on live animals for first contact training and give students the opportunity to experiment in a low-stakes environment at their own pace. These models are designed to cater to specific aspects of clinical skills, so that when they get into the clinical setting, they have some of that learning under their belt to then apply to the nuances that would arise in a real animal.”
The Edna H. Tompkins Trust, a longtime supporter of the Simulation Lab, funded the new grant program. Hinckley-Boltax has received funding from the trust to establish a self-paced practice resource library, a peer clinical education program, an immersive CPR simulation setup, and various other simulation models over the years.
“The steadfast, consistent support of the Tompkins Trust has allowed us to grow and change our curriculum in such a way that we are at the forefront of helping students prepare for day one ready skills,” says Dr. Mike Karlin (he/him), director of the Simulation Lab and assistant professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences at Cummings School. “The Sim Lab has had a significant positive impact on students’ confidence, competence, and overall abilities. The simulation center would not be what it is today without their initial support and championship over the years.”
The awardees of the grant include faculty and staff from Tufts Veterinary Field Service (TVFS) and the Zoological Companion Animal (ZCAM) Service at Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals, who proposed the development of simulated teaching tools for large animal surgical skills training and rabbit handling, respectively, two types of models not yet available in the lab. TVFS clinicians, Drs. Eugene White, David Hernke, and Isabelle Louge designed the surgical model. From the ZCAM team, Dr. Trinita Barboza and senior teaching technician Joseph Popowski developed the rabbit model.
Hinckley-Boltax, Karlin, and veterinary technicians Mike Santasieri and Jill Franko (who manage the Sim Lab) elicited proposals for designs from Cummings School faculty and staff who train students every day on these critical skills and recognize the areas that need to be addressed in the D.V.M. curriculum.
Since its inception three years ago, the Sim Lab has been fully incorporated into Clinical Skills courses. It serves as a resource for students throughout the D.V.M. program to practice procedures and surgeries on models and cadavers. During the preclinical years, students practice specific tasks on simpler models, progressing to applied, case-based, and integrated skills practice. Students in clinics utilize the lab to brush up on skills and in-the-moment training needs, according to Hinckley-Boltax, who notes that a student might visit the lab to practice placing an intravenous catheter before performing the procedure with a live animal, for instance. The lab is also embedded in some clinical rotations. For example, the Small Animal Emergency Medicine and Critical Care rotation includes CPR training simulations and training on other emergency procedures in the Sim Lab.
The Simulation Lab is also a resource for interns and residents to practice techniques before live procedures and surgeries. This summer, new house officers were trained in the Sim Lab as part of their onboarding, utilizing simulation models for endoscopy, anesthesia, point-of-care ultrasound, and other specialties, depending on their training needs.
The idea for the lab and offering quality teaching models took root several years ago when Karlin observed medical students suturing synthetic skin on a model in a simulation lab at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Since only a few veterinary models are available, many models are created in-house by faculty, students, and staff, including a veterinary version of the suture model Karlin saw at Beth Israel. A team of Tufts engineering students built the lab’s spay model. Santasieri attended a simulation model-building workshop at The Ohio State University to continue adding to the lab’s teaching tools. New teaching technician hires, Shannon Conley and Allison Sedlock, attended the workshop this past year to expand model-building expertise to more of the Sim Lab team.
“Students worked on initial ideas and projects that blossomed and expanded into everything we’re doing now. I can remember students trying to make a bladder out of a water bottle,” Karlin recalls.
Hinckley-Boltax describes the lab as evolving in response to the needs of the curriculum to maximize learning impact. “We’ve generated a lot of interest and excitement from the Tufts internal community, and with that comes requests for models that we’ve had to say no to before this grant because we didn’t have the resources. This grant is oriented towards projects that address a significant need important for day-one skills. It gives us the people, time, and financial support to meet these curriculum needs that we otherwise couldn’t.”