SUMMIT was one of the many campus areas hosting young people at the annual Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, held April 26. SUMMIT members Dr. Parvati Dev, Dr. LeRoy Heinrichs, Robert Cheng, and Dr. Craig Cornelius lead this enthusiastic group of future MDs in a busy morning of learning by doing.

SUMMIT Director Dev was just wrapping up an international video conference — consulting with a Pakistani colleague in the middle of the night there — when the dozen students arrived for "Move Over X-Box — Virtual Surgeries are Here." Dr. Dev first explained how SUMMIT's Collab connects doctors, researchers, students and instructors from all over the globe.

Doctors need to understand the human body and the complex 3-D relationships of its parts, so off the virtual anatomy lab we went. Students grabbed stereo glasses for high technology anatomy lessons, examining 3-D dissections from the 1950s, then moving to SUMMIT's modern interactive tools to explore components of the hand and skull. Accessing these media over the internet, any medical school can offer virtual classrooms where students and teachers may be in different timezones or distant continents.

Next, Robert lead the group in interviewing a virtual patient using the Interactive Standard Patient (ISP) program. Learning how to plan effective questions and perform a physical examination, the young doctors-in-training found that diagnosis requires high-touch physician-patient interaction in addition to high-tech tests and laboratory results.

The group then split into three for hands-on experience with three of SUMMIT's simulations for learning, each group rotating through all three stations.

Dr. Heinrichs introduced the students to surgical techniques through LapSim(tm), a computer-based surgical simulation for training doctors in basic surgical skills. LapSim also includes as several realistic surgical procedures, such as a gall bladder dissection.

Students learned how minimally invasive surgery differs from open surgery procedures. Then each had a try at learning the hand-eye coordination and smooth control of the surgical instruments using this realistic training system. As Dr. Heinrichs noted, in real surgery "You can't say Oops!", highlighting the value of surgeons learning their trade by practicing on a patient who can be revised with the reset button.

In SUMMIT's Collab, another group was exploring a virtual world to learn team skills needed in emergency medicine. (It looks suspiciously like Stanford's ER.)

Similar to some on-line interactive video games, each student played a role such as doctor, administrator, patient, and EMT. Navigating their characters' avatars through the corridors and procedures, they experienced some of the real-life team management issues that medical personnel face every day.

To literally "get a feel" for surgery and anatomy, everyone lent a hand to a simulated gall bladder operation with the ReachIn program. Clicking to remove outer layers of skin, fat, and muscle, students probed, prodded, and pulled on simulated tissues, experiencing active force feedback, technically called haptics.

This advanced interface enhances the immediacy of the training and readily shows differences in tissue that are not apparent to the eye. Much was learned, but we are all happy that this patient has an "oops" button!