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t m c » p u l s e | m a r c h 2 0 1 6 29 improve their skills and learn about new technologies. Housed squarely in the heart of the Texas Medical Center, Bass believed the institute would be ideally poised to leverage the incredible depth of expertise and cutting-edge research that exists in Houston. Over a decade later, those ambitions have been realized tenfold. Since MITIE was launched in 2007, the institute has progressed from a single room for robotic surgery training to a world-re- nowned facility that has trained over 35,000 health care professionals across 27 specialties. "While physicians are our primary focus, we train health care profession- als across the board, from paramedics to nurses to anesthesiologists," said Angela Mitchell, operations manager at MITIE. "The physicians we train prac- tice here until they get the procedure down perfectly. That aligns with our vision at Houston Methodist—in order to be 'leading medicine,' these health I think the surgeons who come here feel empowered to potentially adopt something that's going to move them forward in regards to their skill set. There's great joy in that, and there's a little buzz in acquiring the skills necessary to do something better. — BARBARA L. BASS, M.D. Executive Director of MITIE care professionals have to practice until they've really got it." While parts of the functional spaces of MITIE are similar to other training institutes, the center's unique nature stems from its ability to gather different elements—a procedural training labora- tory, virtual hospital environment and research core—together under one roof. For trainees, the educational process begins with didactic lectures delivered by experts in the field, followed by a live procedure demonstration—projected from the operating room itself into an immersive viewing environment known as the "medical presence suite." Afterwards, the trainees move into the procedural skills lab: a massive room that contains 15 small-scale oper- ating stations, each featuring tools— from high-tech endoscopic cameras to simple surgical needle drivers— to conduct surgeries across multiple specialties. Using both anatomical and inanimate models, the procedural skills lab allows surgeons to practice a specialized operation, master a new surgical technique, or learn how to properly use new equipment—all with- out risking injury to potential patients. At the other end of the hall, multi- specialty team training is conducted in the virtual hospital, which uses sim- ulation technology to recreate a patient care environment, from the controlled chaos of an operating room to the intensity of the ICU. "Another important element is the debriefing process," Mitchell said. "For physicians, being able to see exactly where they need to improve is huge because a lot of the other training they receive doesn't include that dimension. Everything is recorded as the scenario plays out, and then the participants are placed in a conference room for either individual or group feedback."