Doctors Group Offers Demonstration of Medical Training Technology to University of Missouri

COLUMBIA, Mo.—In a letter to the University of Missouri (MU), the Physicians Committee—a nonprofit representing more than 12,000 concerned doctors—is offering to fund a demonstration of an alternative training method that could replace the use of live animals in the MU School of Medicine’s emergency medicine resident training.

In a Nov. 1, 2017 e-mail obtained by the Physicians Committee, MU emergency medicine residency program director Christopher Sampson, M.D., writes that “the cadaver model with simulated blood infusion is interesting.” In that same e-mail, Sampson states that the cost of the cadaver model may be “prohibitive,” but under the Animal Welfare Act, cost is not a justification for animal use. To encourage a switch to modern training methods, the Physicians Committee is offering to finance an on-site demonstration of the EnvivoPC simulator from Maximum Fidelity Surgical Simulations—a $4,500 value. The EnvivoPC simulator includes artificial blood pumped through a human cadaver to allow trainees to perform invasive procedures. Maximum Fidelity currently contracts with the U.S. military to prepare first responders for battlefield trauma wounds.

Today, 92 percent of surveyed emergency medicine residency programs in the United States and Canada (196 of 212) conduct training solely using human-relevant methods, including every other Missouri program—Washington University, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, St. Louis University School of Medicine, and Freeman Heath System in Joplin.

The controversial training at MU involves cutting into live pigs to practice procedural skills, but the Animal Welfare Act’s implementing regulations “require that a principal investigator—including course instructors—consider alternatives to procedures that may cause more than momentary or slight pain or distress to any animal used for research purposes.”

“I am hopeful, for the sake of the patients who will be cared for by these doctors, that MU wastes no time in exploring this option,” says John Pippin, M.D., F.A.C.C., Physicians Committee director of academic affairs. “Animal models do not and cannot represent the anatomy specific to human beings. Luckily many options, like the EnvivoPC simulator, can.”

MU already has a state-of-the-art facility—the Shelden Clinical Simulation Center—that could provide the resources to replace animal use in the emergency medicine residency program. The Physicians Committee’s letter describing its offer is addressed to the emergency medicine residency program director, Christopher S. Sampson, M.D., and the emergency medicine residency program chair, Matthew Robinson, M.D.

For a copy of the offer letter or to speak with Dr. Pippin, please contact Reina Pohl at 202-527-7326 or RPohl [at] PCRM.org (RPohl[at]PCRM[dot]org).