Our Facility

The Carl J. Shapiro Simulation and Skills Center at BIDMC is located on ground floor of the Shapiro Building. The Center includes a large teleconference room for up to 65 learners and contains live media feeds to four different operating room endosuites, allowing for teleproctoring, inter-institutional courses, and intercontinental broadcasting of Grand Rounds.

The high-fidelity mock operating and intensive care unit rooms feature working water and gas lines, video cameras, and observation windows with state-of-the-art teleconferencing ability. The procedure simulation area contains 27 partial task trainers, which can be used by several learners in small-group sessions. The surgical simulation area contains computer-based tutorials, filmed operations, and the Virtual Patient Program.

Skills Arcade I

The main entrance of the simulation center is known as Skills Arcade I. While you won't find any pinball machines here, you will find several cabinets that contain a series of surgical simulators. These simulators allow surgical trainees to practice laparoscopic techniques that will eventually be utilized in the operating room. The simulator exercises include the bean drop, rope drill, peg transfer, and culminate in suturing stations. The various exercises allow users to develop better hand to eye coordination and depth perception as well as practice their knot tying and suturing skills. The stations are equipped with surgical tools as found in the actual operating room, complete with laparoscopic cameras.

In addition, the skills arcade also holds a number of virtual reality trainers which allow the learner to perform a virtual operation using a combination of tools and screen-based simulation. Lastly, this particular area holds a computer lab with several hospital workstations allowing our learners a convenient location to work on virtual patient modules, watch videos from our surgical library, or just catch up on some work.

Skills Arcade II

Arcade II holds our larger simulators including airway simulators, virtual bronchoscope stations, endoscopes stations, ultrasounds stations and more. Arcade I and Arcade II are each equipped with a variety of virtual tools and actual tools to offer the learner a wide range of experiences and practice opportunities.

Simulated Intensive Care Unit

Our simulated intensive care unit is one of the busiest in our unit. This space functions as our ICU, emergency room, intake and recovery, and just a patient room. Our courses include cardiac arrest scenarios, code prevention, bedside teaching, among others. The room includes a high fidelity manikin as well as real clinical equipment. As with our operating room it is fully equipped with video cameras and microphones allowing the faculty to tape the session for debriefing and feedback.

Simulated Operating Room

Our simulated operating room is a full replica of the minimally invasive suites in use at BIDMC. The level of detail allows our surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and scrub techs a fully immersive environment. They are trained on the same equipment they use in the operating room giving them as true to life experience as possible.

Our learners will use the manikin patient to replicate real life scenarios while faculty members observe the session from the control room. Sessions are videotaped and used in a debriefing session.

Videoconference Room

With a capacity of 65, the teleconference room is equipped with live media feeds to five operating rooms, four areas of the skills lab and BIDMC's Sherman Auditorium allow for teleproctoring, inter-institutional courses, and international broadcasting.

Debriefing Room

Used primarily as a debriefing area, teams can experience facilitated discussions of training scenarios utilizing captured video of their performance. The sophisticated equipment in the room allows for comprehensive evaluations and presentations. With built in microphones and video cameras all sessions can be recorded for future discussion and quality assurance.

Control Room

Used to monitor and control simulation training sessions, the state-of-the-art equipment in the control room allows for simultaneous viewing and recording of multiple actions in both simulation environments. Sophisticated audio visual equipment allows the monitoring and recording of individual and team performances during a simulation. The room also has the unique capability of broadcasting simulations around the world.