The gateway elective I chose to pursue was Engineering Design and Communication. In this course, teams worked over the course of a semester to develop a product to solve the problem of a client.
The team I was a part of was tasked with building a more accurate cricothyrotomy training model for use in Duke Hospital. A cricothyrotomy is an emergency, life-saving procedure in which an artificial airway is opened in the patient's throat when they cannot breath due to an obstruction or anaphylactic shock. This procedure, being done when someone cannot breath, is very time sensitive. At the time of the course, Duke Hospital trained for this surgery by holding a pig trachea down on a table and cutting into it. This raised many problems. First, it is not very accurate. A trachea that the surgeons would practice on was not covered by skin and they could not practice feeling for the landmarks that they would have to identify. Second, it is not safe. With one surgeon holding the trachea and one performing the operation, a slip of the scalpel could lead to injury. Finally, it is not very sanitary. Laying the trachea on the table exposed the surface to uncontained biohazardous materal. Our solution to this was to build a more analagous model that allowed the surgeon in training to slide a pig trachea into a neck shaped holder and cover it in a skin analog.
From this experience, I learned the value of asking questions. Going into this course, I knew nothing about hospitals, medical devices, or tracheas. My team had to take the time to generate a long list of questions to ask our stakeholder to fully understand what would make our product successful. Applying this more generally, it is imperative to understand the problem that you are trying to solve for a customer. You have to take the time to perform market research to make sure that the product you are developing actually creates value.
This experience also taught me the value of teamwork. Being First-Year engineers, none of us had a ton of technical knowledge. We had to rely on each other for support as we navigated not only our coursework, but learning the technical skills we needed to complete our project. Being able to communicate effectively was also extremely important. I found that the times that we worked best and were most productive were when we took the time to delegate tasks and make sure we were on the same page. This knowledge translates into the real world and will help inform decisions I make on teams from here out.
A video detailing this project can be viewed below. WARNING: there are graphic images of bloody pig trachea.