The ambulance arrives at the hospital with a six-year-old boy on board. We need to act quickly and make a diagnosis quickly. There are 30 teams of trainees from all over Europe compete in simulations on pediatric first aid. Pediatric Simulation Games, an event organized by the University of Sapienza, will be held from 6 to 9 September, in Latina.
The games conceived and designed in 2017 by the professor Riccardo Lubranohead of Pediatrics and Neonatology in the Pontine area and lecturer at La Sapienza in Rome, they return after two years of suspension due to the pandemic and become more international.
Evaluating and guiding the teams in the games will be four judges in charge of state-of-the-art children’s hospitals in the United States.
Pediatricians from all over the world
This year, in addition to the 23 teams belonging to Italian universities, there will be 7 foreign teams: three Spanish, two French, a Latvian team and for the first time a Portuguese team will take part in the games. In Latina, therefore, about 200 specializing students in Pediatrics will gather from all over Europe.
The program will open with the greetings of the rector of the University of Rome La Sapienza Antonella Polimeniand will be present, among others, the president of the Italian pediatric society, Annamaria Staino and the director at the head of the Latina ASL, the doctor Silvia Cavalli and professor Eugenio Gaudio representing the European inter-university consortium CIVIS.
The jury will be composed of trainers who have supported the project since the first edition: Professor Monika Kleinman (Boston Children’s Hospital), Professor Allan R De Caen (Stollery Childrens’s hospital Edmond), Professor Marc Berg (Stanford University), and Professor Sanseaue Elizabeth (Children Hospital of Philadelphia).
It will be possible to watch the tournament in live streaming on the Pediatric Simulation Games facebook page.
The clinical case
The meetings will be structured in a first phase of explanation by the judges of the clinical case of a critical patient assigned, a second part of practical simulation carried out by the trainees on mannequins aimed at countering the pediatric emergency in progress.
Mannequins, sensors and technologies
The mannequins reproduce in a realistic way the effects of the techniques used by the trainees on the critically ill patient through sensors and advanced technologies that simulate the success or failure of any medicine administered or maneuver undertaken. At the end, the techniques used by the trainees in order to acquire the best methodology to deal with a first aid situation will be analyzed through a comparison between students and trainers.
After two days of the tournament, the decisive clash between the two finalist teams will take place on 9 September, after which the winner will be announced.
Remote help for little patients
The final product that will be obtained from these four days is a common base of knowledge and behavior aimed at solving a pediatric emergency, so that every child, wherever he is, can benefit from the same levels of care.
“We tried to organize the event even at a distance – Professor Lubrano declares – but the emotional part created by being all together, the spirit of competition, the desire to get to know each other and compare each other between students belonging to different universities is essential for the realization of Pediatrics. Simulation Games “.