The Bristol medical simulation centre

The Bristol Medical Simulation Centre (BMSC) was opened by Sir Kenneth Calman on 27th January 1997. It is a purpose built facility sited near the Bristol General Hospital and the facility cost £1 million to set up. It was the first centre of its kind in the UK and one of the most sophisticated in the world. The centre consists of a realistic operating theatre containing the sophisticated patient simulator. The theatre is made as real as possible and contains for example, ventilators, defibrillators, state of the art patient monitors, trolleys and drip stands. The theatre looks and `feels´ like a well-equipped modern normal operating theatre. There is a control room with a one way viewing window. This is where the computer scenarios are controlled and the enactment is viewed and videoed. There can be radio communication with personnel in the theatre. There is a de-briefing conference room which contains a one way viewing window to the theatre and real-time theatre monitoring. There is a skills room containing part-task trainers and computer aided learning (GAL) workstations. The part-task trainers allow practice of surgical procedures that are not possible on the present manikin. There is an ACCESS simulator room which is a less sophisticated version of the main human patient-a low fidelity simulator. Also there are catering and administration rooms