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Our Grantees

Across the Foundation’s priority areas, our grantees are working to improve the health of the public through innovative research and programs.  The Foundation awards up to 40 grants on a rotating schedule each year.

Training For the Use of Computerized Mannequins

Theme:

Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Grant Type: Board Grant

Award Amount: $450,286

Grant Awarded: March 2003

Principal Investigator: Martha L. Gray, PhD

Three years ago the Macy Board awarded a grant to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to fund the Macy Simulator Project to explore the potential for using realistic patient simulation in critical care and emergency medicine training. Through the collaborative efforts of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and the Boston-based Center for Medical Simulation (CMS), that project developed and tested pilot cases, established a system for case documentation, implementation and integration of simulator use into existing curricula, and provided free worldwide dissemination of the pilot.

The success of the program, to date, can be attributed to a small group of well-trained operators and users. It has become clear, however, if the use of simulation-based teaching modules is to spread and realize its full potential, that a critical component—“training the trainers”—is still missing. Initial experience has shown that the effective use of patient simulators depends upon the availability of well-trained operators and instructors.

This grant is designed to increase the number of trained operators and instructors to ensure that this promising training technology—now with approximately 400 patient simulators or mannequins in use worldwide—expands effectively. The grant also addresses the need for standards-based documentation and easy dissemination of training materials.

Building on the successful example of the Harvard-Macy Institute, the investigators intend to support a HST/CMS Institute for Medical Simulation with tuition paid by instructors accepted into the program. For the short term, the institute will solicit applicants nationally and use Macy Foundation support to provide competitive training fellowships.

Grant money for the first year will focus on designing the “training the trainer” modules and conducting pilot-programs with participants from outside of the Harvard/MIT community. Those modules will be refined during the second year, with two or three groups of 10 trainees each recruited for three-day sessions. Site visits will be made to centers involved in the pilot-program to assess the effectiveness of the training one year after participation. In the third year, not funded by the Macy Foundation, the Institute will begin a series of sessions requiring tuition payments by trainees, in addition to conducting on-going assessment and making any needed refinements.