June 23, 2025 — When fourth-year medical student Wills Dunham was asked to manually cardiovert a patient experiencing a heart arrythmia in the intensive care unit, he knew exactly what to do. Thanks to an online guided simulation course on defibrillation, cardioversion and pacing that he had completed along with an in-person training at the University of Florida College of Medicine, Dunham was able to administer a healing shock, correcting the patient’s heart rhythm under the supervision of a fellow.

The Manual External Defibrillation, Cardioversion and Pacing, or MEDCP, online simulator is a new feature of the College of Medicine curriculum offered to medical students during their anesthesiology rotation. Developed in part by the college’s Center for Safety, Simulation & Advanced Learning Technologies, also known as CSSALT, the course has three versions: one that uses a generic defibrillator specifically for health care professionals obtaining continuing medical education, or CME, credits, and two versions with popular defibrillator models used in hospitals at UF Health and across the U.S.

Unlike the automated external defibrillators used in public emergencies, which audibly walk you through the steps to deliver a lifesaving shock, medical practitioners in hospital and ambulance settings manually analyze a person’s heart rhythm and deliver an appropriate shock.

“It’s buttonology,” said Samsun Lampotang, Ph.D., FSSH, FAIMBE, the UF College of Medicine Joachim S. Gravenstein Professor of Anesthesiology, CSSALT director and co-director of the MEDCP course. A term he learned from his late mentor and former department chair, Joachim S. Gravenstein, M.D., “buttonology” refers to the learning curve of getting familiar with a new piece of technology or specific model. With a manual external defibrillator, it can take a few tries to find the right buttons and adjust the electrical energy for each shock, using up precious seconds during an emergency.

“Often you may spend some time saying, ‘How do I start it? How do I set the energy level?’” Lampotang said. “Here, you can change the settings and obtain feedback on how you are doing.”

MEDCP was originally developed by Lampotang as a CME course for the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation and the American Society of Anesthesiologists with co-directors Michael Kazior, M.D., an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Virginia Commonwealth University; Daniel Rosenkrans, M.D., an assistant professor of anesthesiology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; Nikolaus Gravenstein, M.D., the Jerome H. Modell, M.D., Professor of Anesthesiology at UF; Cole F. Dooley, M.D., an assistant professor of anesthesiology at UF; UF software developers David Lizdas, BSME, and Simon Mesber, BSEE; and UF project manager Christopher Samouce, Ph.D. It is the third course in the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation Technology Education Initiative started by co-directors Lampotang and Jeffrey Feldman, M.D., of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

In operating rooms, anesthesiologists are often responsible for the rare but critical need to shock a patient whose heart stops or manifests an arrythmia.

Gravenstein realized the course, launched for practitioner CME and quality improvement use in January, could benefit students too, especially when simulating the exact defibrillator model they may need to use during hospital rotations. Available for anyone to take free online, MEDCP has been piloted with medical students at UF and Mercer University in Georgia and will soon be used with senior UF College of Nursing students this summer.

Lampotang is looking to further share the course with departments, colleges and universities that may be interested as the CSSALT team finalizes the two Zoll R Series and Stryker LifePak 15 model variants.

Janos Geli, M.D., Ph.D., DESA, an assistant professor of anesthesiology, and Chris Giordano, M.D., a professor of anesthesiology and director of the anesthesiology/critical care clerkship, have been leading its use with UF medical students.

“We thought the online format of MEDCP was highly conducive for our Generation Z students, who like online learning,” Geli said. “And we could integrate that with psychomotor skills and physical simulation so they can practice on the exact defibrillator interface we use at UF Health.”

Since sharing the course and in-person simulation training as part of the clerkship curriculum this summer, Geli and Giordano have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from students, who feel it’s helped them tremendously.

“Overall, I felt really comfortable with the defibrillator interface,” Dunham said. “I think it is one of the more helpful sessions we have done in med school, and I would definitely recommend it.”

Seeing a student be able to not only learn lifesaving skills from MEDCP but to also use them in real life is like icing on the cake for the whole curriculum team, showing their hard work developing and teaching the course makes a true impact.

“It’s a very satisfying result for an educator,” Geli said. “You don’t even have to have any statistical skills to see it helped transform training into real-life skills.”