As a fourth-year medical student, Colleen Donovan, faced a pivotal moment during a course that introduced her to a simulated scenario: working with a team to save a patient in cardiac arrest. It was a powerful “gut check.”
“I remember being terrified, realizing that someday, maybe soon, I would encounter a critically ill patient, and the only thing standing between that patient and death would be my skills,” said Donovan, director of the simulation program at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS). Donovan also serves in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, an RWJBarnabas Health facility. She spent hours reading and memorizing, but retaining the information under pressure proved challenging. Then, a lightbulb went on.
During her residency at the University of Pennsylvania, Donovan realized she needed a way to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical patient care. She became an advanced cardiovascular life support instructor at the Penn Medicine Clinical Simulation Center, which used high-tech manikins to teach critical care. To read the full story.