Medical Emergency Education Using Emergency Care Simulators in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences

Abstract

Clinical pharmacy training III (bedside training) in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyushu University of Health and Welfare is intended to train pharmacists who can also cope with medical emergencies. Therefore we produced original scenarios that provide experience of various medical emergencies using emergency care simulators. As a result, these simulators enabled students to experience dealing with various medical emergencies such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, automated external defibrillation (AED), adrenalin administration, and oxygen inhalation. In addition, a survey on the necessity for and the degree of the understanding of training contents associated with emergency care simulators was performed before and at the end of clinical training. After clinical training, the necessity for and the degree of the understanding of these training contents significantly increased (p<0.01). The introduction of emergency care simulators into clinical pharmacy training provides experience of not only cardiopulmonary resuscitation but also the treatment procedures as well as observation of improvement in the pathological condition after drug administration, which increases pharmacists' awareness of patient needs in drug therapy. Therefore these simulators are helpful for pharmacy education aiming at improving pharmacists' pharmaceutical care ability.