UF scientist recognized for teaching innovations
The University of Florida has chosen a scientist renowned for developing computerized medical training simulators as its candidate for an international teaching award.
As UF’s nominee, Samsun Lampotang, Ph.D., an associate professor of anesthesiology at the College of Medicine and the McKnight Brain Institute, will receive an award at the 14th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning under way this week in Jacksonville.
He also is in the running for the 2003 Ernest L. Boyer International Award for Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Technology. The recipient will be named Thursday night.
The Office of Research Affairs nominated Lampotang for his work on the Human Patient Simulator and Virtual Anesthesia Machine after a peer-reviewed selection process.
“Dr. Lampotang and his colleagues have done world-class work in terms of developing systems for general training and medical student education,” said M. Peter Pevonka, the College of Medicine’s senior associate dean for research affairs. “Health-care professionals across the world have benefited because of their simulators. That translates to better health care worldwide.”
The Human Patient Simulator is a UF-invented, computer-driven operating room with an artificial patient that looks and responds just as a living patient would to trauma and disease and to hands-on medical treatment.
The Virtual Anesthesia Machine program, called “VAM,” is available for free on the World Wide Web at http://www.anest.ufl.edu/vam. It simulates the inner workings of an anesthesia machine and ventilator — the complex machinery in which oxygen, nitrous oxide and anesthetics mix to render patients insensitive to pain during surgery and other procedures.
The VAM site receives about 100,000 visits per month and is used by 287 institutions or training programs worldwide. It is translated in Greek, Albanian, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.
“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an animation is worth a thousand pictures,” said Lampotang, who also uses the program to teach. “Students can see the interactions that take place with the added dimension of time. The fact that I am both a developer and user of the program in my mind is very powerful. There is instant communication of both points of view.”
Lampotang, together with Edwin Liem, M.D., David Lizdas and Walter Dobbins, designed the interactive animation based on Lampotang’s earlier work with UF anesthesiologists J.S. Gravenstein, M.D., and Michael Good, M.D.
Stuart E. Schwartz of UF’s College of Education received the 2002 Boyer Award.
About 900 faculty representing the major academic fields attend the conference from colleges and universities throughout the world.