Honing ICU and Surgical Skills: Intermedic Elevates Clinical Simulation with Gift of Advanced Equipment
Observing that her patient was not breathing and had no heartbeat, an emergency medicine resident springs into action. As she swiftly lowers the bed to perform CPR, another physician prepares the defibrillator, a lifesaving medical device that sends an electric shock to restore a normal heartbeat. An entire Intensive Care Unit (ICU) team quickly mobilizes to save the patient.
In the end, the patient still lacks a heartbeat—because this patient was never alive to begin with. The patient is a high-fidelity mannequin at the LAU Clinical Simulation Center (LAU-CSC), a state-of-the-art training facility designed to simulate real-life medical situations. Through simulation, LAU faculty can assess the skills of their students, and healthcare professionals are able to conduct training without risking harm to patients. Thanks to a generous contribution of specialized equipment from Intermedic, the LAU-CSC can now simulate more complex clinical scenarios, offering LAU students and care providers an unparalleled window into the realities of ICU and surgical care.
Founded in 1956 by the late Jean Farah as a distributor of pharmaceutical products, Intermedic has grown into one of Lebanon’s leading suppliers of medical equipment and a loyal supporter of LAU’s health sciences schools. “Intermedic’s commitment to medical education is deeply rooted in its history and core values,” says Mr. Michel Farah, Strategy Leader and Member of the Board at Intermedic. “We recognized early on that medical technology is only as effective as the professionals who use it, and that keeping pace with continuous advancements requires ongoing education, not only for our teams but for healthcare providers as well.”
Intermedic’s latest gift of an anesthesia machine, monitor, defibrillator, advanced mobility bed, and syringe pump significantly enhance the LAU-CSC’s capacity to conduct realistic ICU and surgical simulations. The donated equipment has been utilized in more than 75 simulation sessions and educational activities involving medical students, residents, fellows, nursing students, and physicians attending workshops.
Commenting on the impact of this gift, LAU-CSC Director Dr. Hanane Barakat stated that, “the advanced ICU equipment donated by Intermedic has become an integral part of our simulation programs. By recreating highly realistic critical care environments, these resources have elevated the quality of our Crisis Resource Management training and enabled hundreds of healthcare learners each year to develop the clinical judgment, teamwork, and communication skills that are essential during emergencies.”
Dr. Barakat noted that the advanced mobility bed has been a particularly valuable tool in teaching healthcare professionals how to rapidly position, mobilize, and manage critically ill patients in a safe and efficient manner. The ability to quickly transition the bed into CPR mode with minimal effort has significantly increased realism during emergency simulations and highlighted the importance of teamwork and rapid response. One participating physician commented, “I was very impressed by the high-performance bed and equipment. We do not have similar technology in our hospital. The realism of the simulation experience was outstanding.”
Expressing profound gratitude to the Farah Family and Intermedic for their continued generosity, Dr. Sola Aoun Bahous, Dean of the Gilbert and Rose-Marie Chagoury School of Medicine, said, “Equipment alone does not build a simulation center; trust does. Intermedic’s fourteen-year commitment tells our students something a machine never could: that the people preparing them to save lives believe their training is worth investing in. And what that investment really buys is permission for those students to make their first mistakes here, in this room, rather than in an operating theater.”