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26 September 2018
The Cardiac Simulation lab in action
There’s an electric atmosphere in the operating theatre of the Faculty of Health Sciences, as Dr Taha Gwila and his team focus with intense concentration on the fleshy exposed heart beating rhythmically in the opened chest of the patient lying in front of them. The enormous demands of open-heart surgery are evident to everyone looking on. But there’s a catch. 

The patient is faceless and rubberised. The red liquid flowing in the pipes that network from the body is not blood. And the pulsating heart was beating in the body of a pig not too long ago. 

Cutting edge technology
 
This Cardiac Simulation laboratory supplied by Medtronic is the newest addition to the School of Biomedical Sciences’ clinical simulation and skills unit. 

“There’s nothing like this in Africa, and only a few in the world,” says a beaming Prof Francis Smit, Head of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Faculty of Health Sciences.
He explains that this new cutting edge medical technology will revolutionise the way cardiac surgeons and other health professionals are trained and assessed.

Practicing specific procedures

The simulation facilities give students with various levels of competency the opportunity to practice specific procedures in their own time and at their own pace.
“Traditionally training followed the apprentice model, where surgeons started with simple tasks and worked their way up. They assisted senior personnel and their exposure to procedures depended on the conditions presented by the patients before them,” explains Prof Smit.

The simulation technology now enables them to repeatedly practise a certain procedure without any risk to a patient. A sophisticated electronic grading system gives detailed feedback after each session, so they know in which areas to improve.  

Simulated emergencies

The system also allows trainers to create a medical emergency that the trainees then have to deal with.

“Assisting senior surgeons with high levels of competency means that in the past, trainees would often never get the chance to experience these kinds of complications during operating procedures. Now we give them a chance to build that confidence so they’ll be able to handle different situations.”  

Training hub for Africa
 
The UFS cardiothoracic programme is being designed to become a training hub for the whole of Southern Africa, combining distance learning with an on-site high-fidelity simulation and assessment centre.

“This is 100% real!” says an excited Dr Gwila after successfully completing his first simulation session. “As a Senior Registrar at the Cardiothoracic Department I’ve done similar procedures on real patients and there’s really no difference at all. Every registrar should do this before ever touching a real body.”

News Archive

UFS Council unanimously approves two senior appointments
2014-11-24

The Council of the University of the Free State (UFS) unanimously approved the appointment of Dr Lis Lange as Vice-Rector: Academic and Prof Sechaba Mahlomaholo as Dean: Education during its meeting on Friday 21 November 2014.

Dr Lis Lange is currently Acting Vice-Rector: Academic at the University of the Free State, where she holds a substantive position as Senior Director heading the Directorate for Institutional Research and Academic Planning (DIRAP). Prof Mahlomaholo is Head of the School of Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Technology Education at the UFS.

“These are two exceptional and trusted academics with international stature and I am delighted to welcome them as part of the senior leadership of the UFS. Dr Lange’s skills set pertaining to academic management and quality assurance make her one of only a few people with similar skills in the country, while Prof Mahlomaholo is a leading expert in community-based education,” says Prof Jonathan Jansen, Vice-Chancellor and Rector of the UFS.

Dr Lange joined the UFS in 2011. Before this, she was the Executive Director (2006-2010) of the Higher Education Quality Committee of the Council of Higher Education (CHE), and Acting CEO of the same organisation between August 2007 and April 2008. She has been involved in the development and implementation of science and technology and higher education policy in South Africa for a decade and a half, working in different capacities in the Human Sciences Research Council, the National Research Foundation and the Council on Higher Education. Dr Lange has served as a member of the board of the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE) and has participated in several international initiatives on quality assurance. She is the editor of an academic journal focused on the humanities, Acta Academica.

She has undertaken research and published in the fields of history, higher education and quality assurance. Her major concern in both research and practice is the role of higher education in the development of democratic societies, based on social justice. Dr Lange studied in Argentina, Mexico and South Africa, where she obtained a PhD in South African history from the University of the Witwatersrand.

Prof Mahlomaholo is a graduate of the Universities of the North, Western Cape and Harvard University in the United States. He is a National Research Foundation (NRF)-rated Professor of Education.

Before joining the UFS, he worked at six other universities where he was Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Education (UNIN-QwaQwa), Head of Professional Education (Vista University), Professor and Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies (MEDUNSA), Professor and Director of Curriculum Development (Central University of Technology), and Research Professor (North-West University).

His research interests lie in designing strategies mounted on Bricolage, Participatory Action Research and Critical Emancipatory Research as theoretical bases. He leads the NRF-sponsored project on the creation of Sustainable Learning Environments in schools. In this Participatory Action Research project, 28 PhD and 22 MEd students participate under the guidance of 15 academics. The project has relationships with the Global Network project (St Petersburg University), the Post-Colonial Education project (West Indies University) and the Discourse, Power, Resistance project (Plymouth University and now University of London). He has served as guest editor in the following ISI-indexed, peer-reviewed and accredited journals: the South African Journal of Higher Education (2010 and 2014), the South African Journal of Education (2011), Communitas (2012), the Journal of New Generation Sciences (2012), the Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa (2013) and the Journal of Education Studies (2013).

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