title: A distributed virtual environment prototype for emergency medical procedures training.
abstract: Because of the increasing complexity of emergency medical care, medical staffs require increasingly sophisticated training systems. Virtual environments offer a low cost means to achieve a widely usable yet sophisticated training capability. We describe the Virtual Emergency Room (VER) project, a simulation system designed to enable emergency department personnel within level I and II emergency rooms to practice emergency medical procedures and protocols. Because emergency rooms are manned by a wide variety of medical professionals, we are developing a simulation facility that uses a distributed virtual environment architecture to enable real-time, multi-participant simulations. The potential advantages of this system include the ability to evaluate and refine treatment skills, and the ability to provide scenario-specific training for mobile military field hospital teams. These advantages will ultimately improve the readiness of emergency department staffs for a wide variety of trauma situations. This paper describes the VER and the major components of its distributed virtual environment. The current capabilities of our system are described followed by a discussion of recommended follow-on work.
authors.affiliation: Virtual Environments Laboratory, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH 45433, USA. mstytz, sbanks@afit.af.mil
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Stytz
authors.forename: B W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Garcia
authors.forename: G M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Godsell-Stytz
authors.forename: S B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Banks
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D003194:Computer-Assisted Instruction / Q000379:methods*; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006801:Humans; D007318:Inservice Training / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface