Baystate Medical Center: Behind the Times - Using Live Animals for Trauma Training

By Marge Peppercorn, M.D., F.A.A.P.

Picture this: You’re driving home, just like you do every day. You’re nearly to your street when suddenly a car swerves into your lane. There’s a loud crash and you find yourself badly injured and desperate for air. One of your lungs has collapsed. You see someone running toward you and hope they’ll be able to do something quickly to help you breathe.

In this life or death moment, who would you prefer to be coming to your rescue? A first responder who had practiced the technique you need—insertion of a tube into your chest to reinflate your lung—multiple times before on a human-based model that exactly replicated your anatomy? Or someone who had practiced on another species entirely—a pig?

I’ve been a practicing physician for over three decades, and I can say with absolute certainty that if it were me, I’d prefer the former. Humans and pigs do not share the same anatomy, so in my opinion, experience with pigs would be a poor substitute for experience with humans or human simulators.

Unfortunately, if the first responder who comes to your aid was trained at Baystate Medical Center, he or she would have learned to insert chest tubes only on live pigs. When you learn how to treat humans by practicing on animals, suffice it to say that some things can get lost in translation. While Baystate is celebrated in many areas (“Baystate Medical Center honored for promoting organ, eye and tissue donations,” Aug. 30), their Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) program still uses outdated training methods.

Actually, Baystate already has the technology it needs to be able to eliminate its use of live animals immediately. Baystate owns a TraumaMan System, a realistic anatomical human body simulator which is complete with lifelike skin, subcutaneous fat, and muscle and even breathes. Among the many ways this technology is superior to the use of animals is that the anatomy and skin texture of TraumaMan is exactly like that of a human, plus you can practice procedures on it repeatedly since the skin is readily replaceable. You can’t do that with an animal.

According to the National Trauma Institute, trauma accounts for 41 million ER visits and 2 million hospital admissions every year, so excellent trauma training is obviously critically important. Cutting-edge simulation tools like TraumaMan have been used by Advanced Trauma Life Support programs throughout the country ever since the American College of Surgeons approved them in 2001. In fact, numerous studies have shown that using simulators like TraumaMan is just as good as or better than using animals for teaching ATLS surgical skills. It’s no wonder that 99 percent of the nearly 300 surveyed ATLS programs in the United States and Canada have done away with the outdated use of animals.

Trauma patients don’t need veterinarians – they need people who treat humans and who learned their skills on human anatomy, not that of a pig. Nearly all trauma training centers agree and consider animal use to be an outdated, less effective way to train first responders in the skills needed to treat humans, to say nothing of it resulting in unnecessary cruelty and ultimate death to the animal.

Currently, Baystate is one of only two ATLS programs in the whole United States known to still be using live animals. All the rest have modernized, with most having made the switch to using human simulators years ago. Just in our state, for example, the University of Massachusetts Medical School replaced pigs with simulators in 2010 and the Massachusetts General Hospital made the switch in 2011. It’s time for Baystate to do the same. I’m convinced that if Baystate made this responsible, lifesaving change, the medical professionals trained under its guidance would be better prepared to respond to trauma injuries.

If you or a loved one suffered a traumatic injury, who would you hope shows up to help?

Marge Peppercorn, M.D., F.A.A.P., of Sudbury, Massachusetts, is a board-certified pediatrician who was in private practice for more than 30 years before joining NEAVS’ Medical Advisory Board. She is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Medical School.

###