Cardiology patient simulator. Development of an animated manikin to teach cardiovascular disease

An animated manikin simulating 50 cardiovascular disease states has been developed. The diagnostic features include arterial and venous pulsations and chest wall movements that are synchronized with acoustic events representing the four classic areas of auscultation, wide radiation of murmurs and breath sounds. Additional features include changes in eye grounds and pupillary reactions, the occurrence of stroke, automatic aging (with greying of hair), cyanosis and change in blood pressure. An operational model is likely to be ready for clinical evaluation within 2 years at five centers: Mayo Clinic, Georgetown University, Duke University, Emory University and the University of Miami. The animated manikin and its teaching aids, with emphasis on patient simulation, may help meet two major needs: (1) to produce more and better trained physicians in less time and at less cost, and (2) to provide an objective method to measure the clinical competency of physician-students in patient-oriented examinations.