The Dr. Michael and Wendy Saltzburg Clinical Learning & Assessment Center

In the CLAC exam room, students learn about doctor-standardized patient encounters. This allows student-doctors the opportunity to practice their clinical and humanistic skills.

Standardized patients are trained to document the skills of learners and to provide them with honest and constructive feedback based on clinical performance. The patients portray a medical scenario the same way for each learner who examines them. During an encounter, the learner takes a patient's history, performs an appropriate physical examination and then provides the patient with a corresponding assessment and plan.

The CLAC's standardized patient area has 15 exam rooms. Each room is designed to be an accurate representation of what the learners will see in the “real world.” Each room is also equipped with adjustable osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM) tables.

Faculty can watch the patient encounters live from either the review room or the proctor stations. Each exam room is equipped with two cameras and microphones. The audio and video can be recorded to provide faculty with the opportunity to review a learner's performance at a later date.

The CLAC primarily uses six full-body high-fidelity patient simulators for most cases, in addition to two full-body obstetrical high-fidelity patient simulators, one child high-fidelity patient simulator and one newborn high-fidelity patient simulator.

These high-fidelity patient simulators are a highly advanced medical simulation tools used for healthcare training and education. The simulators closely resembles human patients in anatomy and physiology, allowing healthcare professionals to practice a wide range of clinical skills and scenarios. This mannequins offer realistic physiological responses, scenario-based training, data collection for feedback. They are further used to develop skills like CPR, intubation and medication administration. The simulators are also valuable for team training exercises, enhancing coordination and communication among healthcare teams in simulated medical emergencies.

PCOM's CLAC is equipped with six versatile simulation rooms to mimic any healthcare setting, such as a maternity room where learners can practice multiple procedures, featuring a wireless birthing simulator with five fetal heart sound locations, a highly articulated baby with various joint movements, and an audible cry upon delivery. The patient simulator offers audible lung sounds, visible chest rise and fall as well as controllable pulses in eight locations connected to an electrocardiogram monitor. Additionally, there is a neonate simulator with programmable mouth and eyes, limb movement, ventilator support, heart and lung sounds, palpable pulses and seizure simulation. The CLAC can also be setup to mimic an emergency room or intensive care unit for various scenarios and has full monitoring equipment, communication systems and fully-stocked crash carts.

After each simulation has concluded, learners are thoroughly debriefed in a separate area from the simulation rooms. Debriefing rooms enable faculty and learners to review the simulation activity to discuss all aspects of the case.

The clinic skills lab is used to train learners to perform various clinical procedures. Students may work individually or as part of a team to practice with different task trainers.

Task trainers include intubation airway trainers, lumbar puncture trainers, central line trainers, femoral line trainers, IV arm trainers, atrial line trainers, breast simulator trainers, adult CPR trainers, pediatric CPR trainers, infant CPR trainers, female pelvic trainers, male pelvic trainers, suture pad trainers and surgical knot tying practice.

The simulated operating room is fully equipped with a working operating table, oxygen, suction, lights and a trauma simulator which provides learners with the opportunity to perform surgical-type procedures while also learning about the operating room environment. Second-year medical students practice scrub procedures at the scrub sink prior to their operating room rotations.

The CLAC's three control rooms provide secluded areas where faculty can monitor and evaluate learner performance during simulated exercises. Staff are able to control the various simulators, audio/video systems and lab equipment. Each room in the CLAC is equipped with multiple cameras and microphones, allowing faculty and staff to manage, monitor, record,and evaluate each simulation and exam room performance.

The surgical simulator suite houses several advanced simulators. These include the GI Mentor, ARTHRO Mentor, LAP Mentor and FLS Laparoscopic Trainer System.

The GI Mentor is a top of the line endoscopic medical simulator for the training of gastrointestinal upper and lower endoscopic procedures, offering a comprehensive library of modules with more than 120 tasks and virtual patient cases.

ARTHRO Mentor is an advanced arthroscopic training simulator. As the most effective tool for arthroscopic surgery skills acquisition, the system reduces training time and considerably improves the learning curve of the complex surgery techniques.

The LAP Mentor is a virtual laparoscopic surgical simulator which provides a complete training experience to learners of all levels and across all disciplines including gynecology, urology and general surgery.