On September 13, 2007, WISER and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC celebrated the opening of The Pediatric Simulation Center. The center is located in the current Children’s Hospital of UPMC location in Oakland. The goal of the center is to create a safer treatment environment for the patients at Children’s while increasing the effectiveness of education for health care professionals at all career and training levels.

Melinda Fiedor Hamilton, MD, MSc, an assistant professor of Critical Care Medicine and Pediatrics who also serves as the associate director of Pediatric Programs at WISER, is the director of the new Pediatric Simulation Center at CHP. Dr. Hamilton focuses her departmental work on education and the role of simulation in post-graduate medical education. She was the chief pediatric adviser for the beta-testing of SimBabyTM and is now a facilitator for several pediatric simulation courses, including orientation courses for pediatric critical care nurses and fellows.

Simulation can be applied to any specialty. Several of the current courses being offered are Pediatric Crisis Team Training, Basic Life Support Training, Orientation Programs for Nursing, AED Training, and Procedural Sedation for Pediatric Patients. Courses can be developed to address any aspect of patient care.

The center has sophisticated simulation and audiovisual capabilities similar to that which has been successful in the deployment of programs at WISER. The center has SimBabyTM manufactured by Laerdal, and is the most sophisticated infant simulator in the world. SimBabyTM is designed to represent an infant 3-6 months old and can be used to test and train medical personnel on a number of life-threatening scenarios such as shock, cardiac arrest, airway difficulties, pneumonia and collapsed lungs. Those training on the simulator can perform important procedures such as placing a breathing tube in her airway and an intravenous line to deliver medications. Children’s Pediatric Simulation Center will also utilize the SimManTM system, another highly sophisticated high fidelity adult patient simulation system, as well as many partial task trainers to bring their programs to life. As the simulated patient reacts realistically to the students’ interventions there is software recording data which will provide feedback after the exercise. Additionally, these training sessions can be videotaped for review.