Dakota Medical Foundation awards $170,000 to Department of Surgery The Dakota Medical Foundation recently announced a grant of $170,000 to the Department of Surgery to support the development of a simulation skills center. The center will be based at Altru Hospital in Grand Forks and at the medical school’s education building in Fargo. “The Dakota Medical Foundation is honored to partner with the UND Medical School and Altru as they work together to ensure the region has a sufficient number of well-trained medical professionals,” says J. Patrick Traynor, president of the Foundation. The new center will provide simulation-based training for physicians in the school’s general surgery residency program. “We are really excited about this grant,” says David Antonenko, professor of surgery and director of the Surgical Simulation Center. “The center will meet the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education’s requirements for simulation training of general surgery residents.” Family practice and internal medicine residents, medical students, and some allied health professionals will also have access to the center. “Simulation training has been shown to reduce learning time and to improve patient safety,” says Dr. Antonenko. “Simulation will be used to train residents and others in basic surgery skills, minimally invasive surgery such as laparoscopy, endoscopy, and emergency procedures including airway management and ultrasound in surgery.” Once the center is established, a mobile system will be developed to provide training within the State of North Dakota and some surrounding regions for practitioners who are unable to leave their communities to obtain this training. The School of Medicine and Health Sciences is a fully accredited medical school serving the people of North Dakota and the nation. About 47 percent of North Dakota primary care physicians are graduates of the School of Medicine. Almost half of the graduates from the Department of Surgery residency program practice in rural communities in the upper Midwest and 25 percent practice in North Dakota. Also, many of the allied health science practitioners in the state are graduates of the medical school. The Fargo-based Dakota Medical Foundation focuses its efforts on improving health and access to medical and dental care in the region, with a special emphasis on children. Since 1996, the Foundation has invested over $33 million to 300 nonprofit organizations in the region.