UberNoggin

medical mannequin

I’m constantly amazed at the wide variety of interests and projects I get to learn about when talking to companies and faculty. I think if I could compile all the basic understanding I’ve had to gain about all of these fields I might be able to personally rival Wikipedia.

But going from a basic understanding to a research question or a rigorous way to measure the influence of a technology isn’t so easy.

For example, I’ve just returned from a great meeting with a faculty member from the medical school who is doing amazing simulations using a computerized mannequin. Students who might not experience medical emergencies until their residency when a real patient is on the table are now able to practice fast reactions with the dummies. That’s pretty straight forward, right? But what this faculty member is interested in is how the simulations improve the doctor’s ability to communicate clearly in a medical emergency. I asked tons of questions and finally we agreed that what we could actually prove was that the mannequin’s role is to elevate stress in the simulation and that we could measure whether students were able to manage the stress and if the stress influenced their communication skills. We went from “How does the mannequin help students learn to communicate” to “Is there a correlation between the ability to communicate and the stress level of the simulation?” It’s a much clearer, concise question.

It’s difficult to get from a wide question to a narrow one, though, when you’re talking to someone who is immersed in their own field and you’re new to it. I don’t know what a thyroid artery looks like but I do know that if one is bleeding I would freak out and probably freeze rather than giving the necessary direction to a medical staff to stop it and save a patient’s life. It took a series of questions and clarification for me to understand enough about the field to be able to help.

Have you been in a similar situation? What strategies do you use to gather the information you need to get quickly up to speed to help? What tactics do you use to clear away extranious information and hone in on a narrow topic to assess?

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