Dr. Patricio Gargollo, director of the Program for Complex Urogenital Reconstruction, was recently named associate medical director for pediatric surgery of the Simulation Center.
Gargollo’s role in the new position will be to collaborate with the Simulation Center’s medical director, Dr. Jennifer Arnold, to create an expansion of medical simulation education into the areas of pre-, peri- and post-operative care.
“In essence, we want to expand our center to include surgical simulation training,” Gargollo said. “This will include procedural training for residents, fellows, nurses and advanced practice providers. It will also allow us to use the hospital’s international reputation to reach out to an international surgical audience through telemedicine and live simulation courses.”
Lastly, Gargollo said “my hope is to replicate complex surgical cases through simulation in order to prepare surgeons and other providers who may not have the exposure to the type of difficult cases we encounter here at Texas Children’s Hospital.”
“I am very excited about working with Dr. Gargollo and about this new opportunity for the Simulation Center, our staff and our patients,” Arnold said. “It is vital that we identify leaders and champions in surgery in order to expand the educational and patient safety benefits of health care simulation to our perioperative providers and patients.”
The Pediatric Simulation Center at Texas Children’s Hospital is a multidisciplinary, hospital-based center providing hands-on pediatric and obstetric simulation training in a realistic environment to improve patient safety and patient care. In addition to the physical space, the hospital supports the center by allocating full-time personnel including a medical director, assistant director, lead physician, training specialist, systems specialist and now a surgical director.
The hospital’s dedication to the center stems from the fact that 70 percent of mistakes in medicine are due to human error, not lack of medical knowledge. The Simulation Center trains pediatric health care professionals to react and respond to high-risk pediatric and obstetric scenarios in a life-like simulated environment so that risk to patients is substantially lowered in real life situations.
Simulation is a guided technique that recreates a clinical environment and gives health care professionals exposure to high-risk scenarios without putting actual patients at risk. The simulation training experience includes:
- Simulation exercises on high-fidelity mannequins that mimic real emergencies to facilitate team communication skills and real-time responses
- Review of video-recorded simulation
- Debriefing of learners to review and discuss simulation experience
Gargollo recently participated in the Mata conjoined twin separation simulation. During the simulation he, several other surgeons and operating room staff practiced several aspects the surgery, which ended up lasting just over 24 hours.
“Each and every simulation I’ve participated in has helped me prepare for whatever procedure I was about to perform,” Gargollo said. “The experience is truly invaluable and most definitely contributes to the quality of patient care we offer here at Texas Children’s Hospital.”
Gargollo was recruited to Texas Children’s Hospital to be the director of the Program for Complex Urogenital Reconstruction, which specializes in the care of patients with bladder and cloacal exstrophy, cloaca and neurogenic bladder. He also is the co-director of the Urology Robotic and Minimally Invasive Surgery Program. After earning his medical degree at Harvard Medical School, Gargollo completed a residency in general surgery followed by one in urology at Massachusetts General Hospital. He also did a fellowship at Children’s Hospital Boston.