Pregnant Robot Mother... (for doctor training)
The current change in my professional life has been interesting. Moving from 20 years of trauma surgery at the end of the medical line, with some primary care on the side, to academic medicine is opening new frontiers. This afternoon I witnessed a complete, and completely normal, live, vaginal birth – by a robot. Robotic patients will be transforming medical training, especially for continuing education in rural areas. Robots are now available that are quite realistic and can be programmed for many rare maladies that many doctors and nurses may never see but which must be recognized in an instant when they occur.
The birth today was from a fully functional and programmable “mother” who could present everything from a normal vaginal birth to a birth with virtually any complications dialed in. The body, fluids and even the sounds of birth were all present – and available in several languages. Only the smells were missing, and you can be certain those are being worked upon. The robot was completely monitored with the same equipment used in the delivery room and all respond in real time to any programmed situation. The possibilities for training medical personnel, EMTs, nurses, doctors, are staggering.
After the successful birth, and as the patient was being cleaned up, the mid-wife who ran the demonstration discussed how she had been using the robot. A most interesting application, only barely touched upon, is in sex ed for, say, fourteen year old women. The lab school with this university has already had her visit. The parents are highly educated, quite liberal and quite open to the training. How the reception will be in communities that are not education based, still needs to be discovered. There were follow-up interviews with the girls who observed the birth. They seem to have, in the short-term, developed a more mature approach to their budding sexuality than women of the same age who, for instance, saw videos of the same procedure or just read about it or sat through lectures. Questions following were handled by the midwife and several volunteer mothers who shared their experience and testified to the reality of the whole thing.
In addition to trying to hire the mid-wife (an excellent trainer) for my new school, faculty and grad student support for doing research on the longer term effectiveness of the training were proposed. Will this reduce sexual activity? Cause more safe sex practices? Cause a community backlash? We do not know but a graduate nursing student is now figuring out to do the research.
If any of you, of any age, has access to a similar training facility, I highly recommend it for YOU and for young women. Certainly some school boards will be receptive! Yes, this is the leading medical research school in the country and we are pushing the envelope in many areas and the robot costs about a quarter million euros but there have been several hundred manufactured. They must be around most of the developed world. They just were invisible in the Northwestern Highlands.
Brandye
Replies:
Brandye, is this the famous http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAzmC0uYKAY Noel - the Pregnant Robot? I don't see any fluids in the vid, but maybe they didn't fill the bottles prior ;) And this vid is a little older, so perhaps the next version of her is more advanced.
I think it's great how students can learn like this! How technology can be so good to us. It's so hard to learn these things from a text-book, it takes experience. Learning hands-on without a real pregnant mom and thus without the real risks. And if there is even more benefit in educating youngsters; bravo! :) Though I hope the sex-ed-teachers will honor proper education and not use this robot to scare the hell out of youngsters. I've seen that happening on an American tvshow: how they tried to convince young girls of the dangers by showing the most shocking birth-video's (they had picked vids that would make an adult woman want to abort, so to speak).
A little more on the primary purpose and design of the pregnant robot: Off course this is a skill-teaching robot. It does not pay credit to the interaction that a student should learn to do with the birthing mom nor the process a birthing mom goes through. The robot is on fetal monitor and IV, whereas in reality it could very well not be like that. With a healthy low-risk birth, those are not likely to be contributing and could cause unnecessary stress. From what I've seen on youtube and been told, Noel can not be positioned any way other than on her back. Is that correct? Now that's a pity... Since we know that positioning could facilitate birth. In fact: putting women flat on their back during the second stage of labor is likely to be ineffective and could even be harmful (as formulated in "a guide to effective care in pregnancy and childbirth" by the Cochrane Library, which is based on scientific research).
In my opinion; students should immediately learn to work their skills from different angles. Wouldn't it be absolutely fabulous if future obgyn's/midwifes/etc would get educated according to today's scientific insights? Education today is the best place to start on the road towards better birth!
RedRoses
The demonstration was of a normal birth. Tame as a delivery can be. The real medical value of the many robots being developed (some can walk) will be the ability for health care workers to experience unpredictable and unusual situations. These cannot be scheduled and all of us go through our entire careers without seeing many situations or conditions. Hopefully, the residency exposes us to most of what we will experience and continuing practice fills in gaps within our specialties.
To be able to "program" these unusual situations gives the opportunity for all medical practicioners to see dangerous situations more realistically. If the diagnosis is missed, treatment will not likely be effective. This will be especially true in rural or remote areas. The size of the population presents fewer learning experiences than major medical centres. When some of these rarities, say a clot in a lung, show up, the response must be rapid. Having seen the conditions before, repeatedly, through a robot, diagnosis is more likely to be quick and accurate.
Certainly, irregular births should not be the first seen by young women. Clear demonstration in three dimensions in real time and with women who have experienced birth can be a bit of a rite du passage for women early in their sexual development.
Brandye
That's very clever. Yes I think if it was used in teaching youngsters it would certainly help them get to grips with the full realities of sex and would be more thoughtful of what they do. After all in the day's before women mostly gave birth in hospital and had a child at home a young girl may have more readily witnessed it and learnt from it. These days youngsters don't get to learn about life until it is too late.
Newtolove
Hey, that would make some cool research! In Holland about 40% of the babies are delivered at home. What if this would also contribute to our low rates of teenpregnancy? :) No doubt it's mainly sexual education, but would be interesting...
RedRoses
