(Photo: Gene Hobbs)

Look at all those gears go.

Back in my day — a long, vast time of 2 years ago — our medical school had an ancient version of Harvey, a patient medical simulator machine that mimicked heart and breath sounds. It constantly broke down — as would be expected for a mechanical machine launched in 1968 — but it was very quaint, if not entertaining, to watch the contraption unfold, gears grinding and wheels spinning and all.

(future internist Larry Kim, surgeon Madhukar Patel, and internist Joy Ye)

Fast forward to today. On my last week of my ICU (intensive care unit) rotation, they treated us to an afternoon session at the UC Irvine School of Medicine’s all-new-with-new-car-smell Simulation Center. In it, nurses and staff dressed in scrubs guided us through operating rooms with working equipment and several amazingly life-like simulation mannequins that not only had carotid artery, radial artery, dorsalis pedis pulses, plus heart sounds, breath sounds, a throat to intubate — and blinking eyes! The staff even pushed a button in the control room to make the fake patient seize. It’s pretty crazy to watch a humanoid thrash about in seizure: this thing, this lifeless being, this humanoid robot is just one step away from an actual human with an actual seizure.

Recovery position. Protect the airway. Thiamine. Dextrose. Na/Ca. Lorazepam. Phenytoin. Phenobarbital. Midazolam, pentobarbital, propofol.

(future physicians Mike Eskander and Erica Frumin)

We went through three cases of patients, and we students directed the show as small groups of us tried to resuscitate each patient and prevent them from further crashing. I couldn’t help thinking with envy how cool — and educationally effective — it would’ve been had I had access to simulators in my first three years of medical school. And I’m seeing a lot of stuff that UC Irvine is doing for its new students, like providing iPads, re-doing the epidemiology/biostat course, launching a new pharmacology curriculum, Twitter feeds, a new medical education building, and — soon — portable ultrasound machines. And it’s something to be proud of.

It’s exciting and scary to think that in less than a year, I’ll be the one trained in ACLS to prevent patients from dying, administering all medications, and taking care of people on the medicine unit, neurology unit, and psychiatric units.

Recovery position. Protect the airway. Thiamine. Dextrose. Na/Ca. Lorazepam. Phenytoin. Phenobarbital. Midazolam, pentobarbital, propofol.