Better Training, More Equipped For Real-Life TraumaHuman-akin simulators for infant, child or adult are far more applicable training tools for residents and their future patients. American Heart Association, American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), and Emergency Nurses Association (ENA) — agencies that coordinate adult and most pediatric life support courses — endorse manikin/simulator use, not animals. “Currently, 99 percent of surveyed ATLS programs in the United States and Canada exclusively use nonanimal, human-based training methods,” Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)

Indiana UniversityPCRM has good news! At Indiana University students will no longer learn medical techniques on cats, or other animals, in IU's pediatrics residency program. That's fantastic news for cats, who had oral breathing tubes shoved down their throats, over and over… causing bruises, bleeding, scars, pain and sometimes death. Students now train with human-relevant infant simulators, a far more realistic training tool for residents and their future patients.

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (UHUHS) School of Medicine in Bethesda, MDAt USUHS — targeted in a Kinship Circle campaign Dinasaurs: Big Med Schools With Animal Labs — pigs get a break. Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) instruction at this U.S. military school ended animal use. PCRM had “pressed the Department of Defense for records via the Freedom of Information Act and filed a state level animal cruelty complaint” against USUHS. Previously, USUHS replaced live ferrets in its pediatrics clerkship.

“Virtually all ATLS programs use human-modeled methods, which provide the best, most accurate training experience available today. Failure to keep up with modern training methods is a disservice both to ATLS course participants and to their future patients, ” John Pippin, MD, FACC, Director of Academic Affairs, Physicians Committee

Most advanced medical instruction — emergency medicine, Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS), military/combat trauma, pediatrics — has now evolved from live animal labs to human-applicable simulation and other medically relevant techniques.