Simulation Center

International Center for Advanced Medical Education Brno (ICAME Brno)

The International Center for Advanced Medical Education Brno (ICAME BRNO ) project is a strategic international project of St. Anne’s University Hospital in Brno and the Government of the Czech Republic. Preparations and the upcoming completion of the project is supported by Mayo Clinic, which is the main partner of St. Anne's University Hospital. Mayo Clinic, which has been running its own simulation center since 2006, has provided St. Anne’s University Hospital with a license to build and operate a multidisciplinary simulation center that will become the first training center within the Global Networking in Advanced Medical Education network in the European Union.

The simulation center is an educational center where individual students and whole teams learn how to solve real-time situations with the help of a range of simulation technologies, including actors playing patients, robotic patients, and other cutting-edge technologies. It makes it possible to practice for virtually any situation that might arise in clinical medicine, from obtaining anamneses (clinical histories), through resuscitation, to handling emergency situations (such as large-scale traffic accidents) and conducting sensitive communications between medical personnel and patients and their family members.

The center uses the "learning by mistake" approach; mistakes are seen as opportunities for motivating educational experience. In contrast to the present (previous) hands-on training, in simulation training the patient is not endangered by trainee mistakes (the "error-free medicine" concept). The safety and effectiveness of patient care are significantly enhanced. At the same time, the safe introduction of the latest medical care methods into clinical practice is faster.

The simulation center will enable:

• Training of medical schools/university students
• Hands-on training of physicians, medical students, nurses, and others
• Improvement of communication skills for interaction with patients and their families
• Increased competitiveness of students at national and international levels
• Increased safety of patients and higher quality of medical care provided

The simulation center will encompass a unit for clinical training, including the simulation of an urgent admission of a patient, a unit for communication skills training, a unit for medical personnel training in surgical and other methods (virtual simulation), and a unit for implementing new technologies (hi-tech). A simulation heliport will be located on the roof of the building. The goal is to create a virtual hospital which will closely resemble real environment. Only in this way is it possible to ensure the desired effects of simulation education.

St. Anne’s University Hospital already has project designs for the planning process and expects to be issued a planning permit for the project in the foreseeable future. As it is expected that the ICAME project will be financed from several sources, a feasibility study and the project of the center are being elaborated. It is expected that a substantial part of project costs might be covered from the structural funds of the European Union.