Text written in Basque and translated automatically by Elia without any subsequent editing. SEE ORIGINAL

The virtual hospital

The machines used by medical students or residents to perform practices as close to reality as possible are located in the Basurto Hospital. This is how the new virtual hospital works.

A man affected by an asthma attack was taken by an emergency services ambulance from Bilbao to the virtual hospital in Basurto. There were doctors Víctor Bustamante and Iñaki Arriaga and medical residents Usune and Leire González. Thanks to the work of the resident doctors, a few minutes after arriving at the hospital, the patient's condition improved significantly.
The next patient to be treated by the resident doctors Usune and Leire González will be flesh and blood and the evolution of the patient will depend on their decisions. Medical residents put into practice what they have learned in the virtual hospital of the University of the Basque Country. This will allow them to face real cases with future training.

VICTOR BUSTAMANTE; UPV/EHU: Do it fast and well or have difficulties... the prognosis will be very different. There may be difficulties in certain clinical situations, but training helps us to avoid these difficulties well. Everything we do in the simulation will affect the efficiency with which we treat patients.

Virtual hospital simulators are not common machines, mannequins and/or dolls. They are tools that respond to the decisions that students make. As it happens in real life, the clinical cases simulated by the instruments improve or deteriorate depending on the treatment received. If the right decisions are made, patients will recover and if the wrong decisions are made, they will not improve and/or get worse.

IÑAKI ARRIAGA; UPV/EHU: We ask the student to interact with the mannequin, to make decisions, and we will make decisions based on the decisions made by the student, some appropriate and some not. After that, everything is valued.

The tools available to doctors and students are varied; simulators allow medical residents of each specialty to acquire the ability and ability to adequately care for their patients. Resident physicians in emergency, urology and/or surgery are trained at the virtual hospital of the University of the Basque Country.
Surgical operations are performed by laparoscopic techniques without inflicting large wounds on patients. The equipment and camera needed to perform the surgery are introduced into the human body through a series of small incisions. Doctors are trained with a simulator. They learn how to move their intestines and/or make sutures. Residents report that they receive different sensations with their patients. However, they recognize that the simulation is very real.

In the field of gynecology, breast examinations are performed. The goal is to learn how to detect pathological explorations.

DANIEL ANDIA; UPV/EHU: In this way they become accustomed to performing a mammary examination that may have some suspicion of pathology.

Students are also familiar with the experiences that doctors may have during childbirth.

DANIEL ANDIA; UPV/EHU: There is no other way because the students are not prepared to attend the births. The simulators and, in this case, the mother's pelvis and doll allow them to know what it feels like to take out a fetus. In this way, when the time comes, they will remember that session they did when they were studying medicine.

Naiara Ortiz and Iratxe Uriagereka are helping a six-month-old boy with breathing difficulties. The doctor Carlos González explains the case to them, and the resident doctors, after requesting several tests, manage to normalize the child's breathing. He's been given oxygen and a bronchodilator.
The entire session has been recorded and will then be analyzed, evaluated and scored.
The medical professors of the University of the Basque Country have no doubt: the simulators of the virtual hospital are tools that help to assimilate what has been learned.

CARLOS GONZÁLEZ; UPV/EHU: This is the future of university teaching. Obtaining uncommon clinical cases, respiratory insufficiencies, serious neurological problems..., repeating them whenever we want, confronting students with these clinical cases, doing what they believe and then correcting them according to what we, the teachers, know... So yes, this is the future of college.