In the field of wound care that is a medical sub-specialty, wounds with dead tissue are often debrided i.e., dead tissues are removed with a sharp instrument. Debridement is a process whereby medical professionals cut and excise the dead tissue with the goal of cleaning a wound that contains a dead tissue. This is common practice in humans with wounds, but there is no good way to practice this in a classroom setting. Many times, anatomical models are typically used in classroom demonstration, patient education, and training surgeons to perform specific surgical procedures or wound debridement. However, when training health care professional to perform this task, there exist no good model to practice the wound debridement skill, as a human example cannot be used while training.
Presently, there are many synthetic or rubber wound models available in the market. But these are expensive and moreover are not interactive. For example, a Seymour Butts is expensive and is only meant for observation purposes. Such models only show different types of wounds, but they are not intended for debridement as this may ruin the models. Traditional methods of teaching the skill of wound debridement use either an orange as the peel has similar texture to the outer layer of a dead tissue, but that is where the similarities with the dead tissue ends. Another model currently, most instructors or trainers utilize for teaching or practicing debridement is pig's foot as its anatomically realistic, but there is not a good way to create the texture of the dead tissue within the pig's foot. As the traditional models are not realistic. Moreover, oranges and pig's feet are perishable, therefore need to be refrigerated and usually have a short shelf life. Hence, the end user, i.e. the trainee medical professional, does not get an idea of what real tissues and structure would look like.
Therefore, in light of above discussion, there exists need for improved interactive wound models for debridement that are more realistic in nature.