Penn State's College of Medicine may soon have a lot more dummies --computerized mannequins in its Simulation Development and Cognitive Science Lab.

The College of Medicine at Hershey Medical Center proposed an upgrade of its Simulation Lab to a newer, larger facility to Penn State's Board of Trustees March 23, said Dr. Elizabeth Sinz, director of the Simulation Lab and associate professor of anesthesiology at the College of Medicine.

The current Simulation Lab -- which began in 1992 -- is housed in a 2,000 square-foot space with an additional 800 square-feet of conference rooms, Sinz said. The new facility will be about 10,000 square-feet and used for various teaching and training procedures. It will include more cutting-edge equipment, she said.

Depending on available finances, Sinz said she hopes to see the lab moving to its new location, at the center of the College of Medicine's campus, within the next two years.

Simulation is any use of an artificially created environment in healthcare that mimics a real healthcare situation, Sinz said. Simulation is used for "rare events" training to teach medical students how to handle uncommon cases and for practicing surgical procedures, Sinz said.

Training using simulation techniques also teaches students to work together as a healthcare team and to train them to have good interpersonal skills and a good bedside manner when interacting with patients and their families, she said.

"Simulation has become a really progressive way to teach healthcare providers," Sinz said. "It allows them to work in the lab before working with actual patients." In the lab, students are given an example of a medical case and must "treat" a computerized mannequin --which simulates a real patient by producing heart and lung sounds, pulses and pupil reactions -- according to its specific "condition," she said.

"Students interacting with this mannequin treat the mannequin as if it is alive," Sinz said. "If we give them a [simulated case], the simulation patient acts that way, so [students] quickly get into the mode and really take it seriously."

Jillian Davison, a first-year student at Penn State's College of Medicine, said working in the Simulation Lab has been a positive educational experience. Treating a mock patient with type 2 diabetes in the lab enabled Davison to apply what she learned through textbooks to a real, hands-on situation, she said. "We have so much information to learn that you can read something a million times, but it won't stick in your mind," Davison said. Although Davison said she would feel comfortable treating real patients with type 2 diabetes after working in the Simulation Lab, she knows more time in the lab and experience working with real patients is needed, and she looks forward to the introduction of the new, larger lab.

While Penn State was one of the first schools to use complex simulation -- such as computerized mannequins -- many other institutions have adopted simulation training for medical students, Sinz said.

The University of Illinois College of Medicine has been using the human patient simulator facility at Rush Medical College for the past three years to train students by simulating operating room situations without the risk of harming real people, said Dr. Peggy Wheeler, professor of anesthesiology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.

"Whether it's a medical student, or resident, or a nursing student, you can just try out your thoughts without worrying that somebody's going to pay the price of this," Wheeler said. "We can give real-type situations and you still get the feeling that this is real and you see the consequences of what you're doing."

Sinz said she hopes the lab's new facility will continue to allow students to benefit from the advantages of simulation training, she said.