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NUS team’s abdominal simulator a great help for medical students
 MEDICAL students now have a dummy on which to practise their abdominal examination skills, thanks to a local doctor and his students.
Named Abe the Tummy Dummy, the world’s first abdominal simulator took a year to conceptualise and develop.
The team that came up with it was led by Associate Professor Erle Lim, senior consultant neurologist from the National University of Singapore’s Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
Abe, which was modelled after one of the team members, is made from plastic and silicone with help from the Design Incubation Centre, and the Division of Industrial Design of the NUS School of Design and Environment.
It was finally completed earlier this month.
Abe was first showcased to the world last week in Glasgow, in the United Kingdom, at the annual Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) conference.
Prof Lim, who presented Abe to international medical practitioners and educators, said the people there were excited and impressed, with many testing out the dummy for themselves.
“We will form an international group to try him (Abe) out and hopefully, this will help with worldwide uptake and put Singapore on the medical education map.”
Prof Lim, together with four senior medical students, came up with the idea of a simulator last year, which would let medical students practise as much as they wanted.
Previously, students could only practise abdomen examinations on real patients who would allow it.
 Prof Lim explained that the limitations of practising on real patients are that patients can experience some discomfort and will eventually get tired.
“Usually within two or three times (of practice), patients just say, ‘no, please leave me alone’ or ‘come back tomorrow’, and then every time they see a (medical) student, they just run to the toilet,” he added.
Prof Lim said his idea stemmed from other available simulators that can simulate heart attacks and even one that simulates childbirth.
“We looked through the literature and there was no such thing as an abdominal simulator anywhere in the world, so we decided to build one,” he said.
Such manikins allow medical students to practise when contact with patients is limited, such as during the H1N1 influenza outbreak last year and Sars in 2003.
The new tummy simulator, which can be produced at a low cost, will have several types of organs which can be placed in a variety of combinations to simulate different medical conditions.
The idea is for students to press its abdomen and feel what it is like when certain organs are abnormal, such as an enlarged liver or spleen.
Dr Ng Chew Lip, who was involved in the project when he was a senior medical student, said a lot of effort was made to make the dummy feel realistic.
He cited the example of pressing the abdomen to feel the kidneys, known as balloting, which is very difficult to do on real patients.
“Personally when I tried it out, I felt this was as good as anything we could get for an abdominal simulation model,” said Dr Ng, who is now working at the National University Health System.
“I wish when I was a student, I could have had this, then I could have done it 10 times, a 100 times, balloting the kidneys; otherwise it is really very difficult.
“Sometimes we go for exams without having done enough practice, because of the shortage of clinical material, live patients, and I’m sure students will find this
really useful.”
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