VCOM View Vol 10 No 1

Soon after making these observations, White had the good fortune of engaging in a discussion with VCOM’s Vice Provost for Research, Gunnar Brolinson, DO. Brolinson, who works as a team physician with the U.S. Ski Team, had been undergoing training simulations at a MESS Course (Medical Emergencies in Ski and Snowboarding). Brolinson said that part of the training occurred on the ski slopes where Colorado osteopathic medical students volunteered as victims for the simulated injury events. Part of

him to start brainstorming about how to create a better device. “In our conversations, Dr. White and I agreed that a compact, renewable, more realistic suit for significantly less cost would be ideal,” said Brolinson. White and Brolinson also agreed that the vest would be of great benefit to VCOM students during the mass casualty drills on the various campuses. “I wanted to move the world of high-fidelity medical simulation forward by creating a device that is realistic, immersive and

fully functional on or off a wearer or manikin,” said White. “The device needed to be wearable, moulagable, scalable, safe, lightweight, durable, repairable, realistic and capable of a large number of routine or critical procedures by current standards of practice,” White added. Brolinson used a term called “bio-fidelity” to describe what they were looking for in a vest. “The more realistic, or life-like, you can make the feel of the vest, the better the simulated scenario is,” said Brolinson. “With disaster training events, having to shift from moulaged patient actors to a critical task trainer in order to perform needle decompression or chest tube thoracostomy sacrifices the

“ I wanted to move the world of high- fidelity medical simulation forward by creating a device that is realistic, immersive and fully functional on or off a wearer or manikin.” J.J. White, DO, PhD, VCOM-Auburn Associate Dean for the Center for Simulation and Technology and HERT Vest leader

the training involved usage of a simulated trauma suit on the students, however

Brolinson said that the device being utilized

was complicated, cumbersome and expensive. White’s conversation with Brolinson motivated

summer/fall 2020 | VCOM V iew M agazine 27