Vital Signs

practice makes perfect

In medicine, the adage “practice makes perfect” can mean the difference between life and death.

Thanks to advances in technology, UNMC students have never been better prepared to enter the working world.

“People aren’t born with medical skills,” said Patti Carstens, director of the clinical skills laboratory at UNMC. “Rather they are learned and developed with time, training, practice and repetition.”

The use of patient simulators has been one of the key tools in improving medical education. These lifelike mannequins provide students with training experiences that make life-threatening conditions seem real.

Best of all, students have access to patient simulators inside UNMC’s Michael F. Sorrell Center for Health Science Education, one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the state. By using patient simulators, UNMC students perform procedures hundreds of times during the course of their training.

“The range of procedures with the simulators is almost limitless – from delivering a baby with complications to performing a laparoscopic surgery,” Carstens said. “They have had a huge impact in better preparing students in the practice of medicine.”

That’s good news when the patient is you.