Medical Simulation & Procedural Training Centers

MITIE is comprised of three core components:

• A virtual hospital for recreating high-risk patient care environments. This area contains brief/debrief rooms, a simulation suite, a partial task training area and an inanimate skills lab.
• A procedural skills lab for hands-on training with state-of-the-art models.
• A suite of operating rooms for image-guided procedure research, robotic surgery and technology development.

MITIE Inanimate Skills Lab

The MITIE Inanimate Skills Lab offers additional training opportunities for medical students, residents and fellows.

The MITIE project also includes a 1,000 square foot Inanimate Skills Laboratory (ISL), which is an extension of the Virtual Hospital. ISL supports medical students, residents, fellows and faculty from multiple specialties who work and train at Houston Methodist. It is located in the heart of the hospital, one floor above the operating rooms and around the corner from the surgery resident call rooms, to foster around-the-clock availability.

A full-time surgical educator runs ISL with the assistance of physician champions. Together they build educational programs targeted toward trainees of all levels. This training includes open and laparoscopic surgical skills, surgical stapling, vascular anastomosis, endoscopic vein harvest, placement of chest tubes, difficult airway management, ventilator management, flexible GI endoscopy, bronchoscopy and basic ultrasound.

These programs are proficiency based so that, once introduced to the exercise, the trainee can improve with self-directed practice fostered by expert coaching and well-defined milestones for required progression.