Tag Archives: education

September 21, 2021 · 4:28 pm

Five Tips for Creating Hybrid Curricula for Simulation Based Learning

For the purposes of this discussion, we will assume that hybrid curriculums in simulation combine online educational materials in advance of on-site activities involving (in person) simulation into one curriculum.  

Why Hybrid?

There are things that we want the student to obtain knowledge on from a perspective of knowing things, or cognitively loading, for an upcoming education event. This often lends itself to carefully created on-line course work.

The in-person side of the equation is best used for when we want to see people doing things, particularly doing things with an understanding of the knowledge that they had already studied during the pre-work described above.  Combining these two facets, or hybrid learning, are some of the most efficient and effective designs for simulation programs.

Accompanying Video Discussion

Advantages

It allows students to be fully prepared from a knowledge perspective before the simulation encounters. This will allow you to conduct your simulation encounters at a much higher level by “raising the tide” of the knowledge of the learners in advance.  Such a design can potentially reduce unnecessary (costly) time in the simulation center. It also allows for students to assimilate the knowledge portion of your program at their own pace on their own time. Further, it helps to set the expectations of what the learners will need to incorporate when they participate in the simulations. Conducting the online portion as pre-work allows the student to seek out additional instruction mediums to help enhance their knowledge base understanding of the materials.

Disadvantages

Curriculum planning will require more effort. It’s more complicated than just deploying a simulation or just creating online education in isolation. You’re doing both! Combining the two which means that there is a time investment in creating the online materials that didn’t exist before we decided to move into a hybrid curriculum. There may be additional skills or resources needed associated with the creation of the materials and/or the administration of some sort of learning management system to make the online curriculum available to your learner population.

Students may not do the work online and prepare like they should before they come to your simulation center. Thus, you need to consider building incentives into the program that creates a compelling reason to do the work.

Tip 1: Begin with the End in Mind

Start with a detailed list of exactly what we want them to know and exactly what they want them to do. Yes, folks it is creating learning objectives, just like we’re designing simulations. Then carefully decide what is knowledge, what is skills and what is application of skills to help parse out which of the curriculum can benefit from on-line (pre) learning.  

Tip 2: Create High Quality Learning Materials

You want your students to take the online materials seriously. So, it is important to ensure they are of high quality, contribute to the learning, and not distracting. Not everything in your pre-learning needs to be Hollywood quality. Many people now do cell phone or mobile phone videos, and that’s fine! However, I want to caution you on the audio. You must make the audio or sound as good as the picture looks. If not, it is distracting, and your students may not take things seriously.

Tip 3: Create Active Learning for the Pre-Course Material

Try to create components of active learning in your online materials. Just because it’s online material and delivered asynchronously doesn’t mean there can’t be an active component. Resist the urge to simply regurgitate one of your old lectures and then toss it up online!

Find small opportunities to have them DO something. It might be as simple as asking them to write out a list of the steps of a procedure, drawing a diagram that they see on the screen, or maybe connecting social media so that they are communicating and learning from and/or with their peers. Lastly, having them taking an on-line assessment or quiz can serve as an effective tool.  

Tip 4: Ensure Learner Expectations and Consequences are Clear

Make sure your learners are clear on their responsibilities associated with the completion of the online materials, and what the consequences are if they don’t. Additionally, ensure the learners understand how the pre-course content is linked to the expectations that will be encountered when they arrive for the simulation sessions.

Some design examples include having the learners take a written pretest when they arrive at the simulation center and determine whether they have adequately prepared for the simulation or not. Other examples make it clear that they will be called on and expected to know the answers for the content contained in the pre-course materials.  It is important that we are fair to the student, with hybrid education, we need to ensure that the learner expectations and consequences are very clear.

TIP 5: Link Your Online Materials Directly to Your Simulations

Work to create an integrated continuum of learning that carries forward from the online materials through the expectations that the learners will encounter during the simulations. This can be emphasized through the direct inclusion of online materials into your simulation sessions. 

Consider including exact diagrams, exact pictures, exact phrases and themes utilized during the online learning during your face-to-face instruction. It might be in the form of a mini lecture. It might be audio/visuals that are incorporated during the debriefing process that can trigger in their mind the lessons that were learned from the online material and how it’s being applied to the simulation session learning outcomes.

Conclusions

The words online and hybrid can cause educators to become nervous because of the amount of work that’s involved as well as not understanding how to make those linkages between the pre-course materials and the simulation sessions. Admittedly, it is more work, but I would argue that the outcomes are far superior then either modality alone. Think of it as an investment. Things that can be moved to the online portion of hybrid design can prepare the learners so the valuable on-site time with the faculty can be conducted at a higher level.

I think that by incorporating good hybrid design with these tips, you will find that you will be creating exceptional learning environments for your students.

Until the next time, happy simulating!

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November 5, 2019 · 8:36 am

Simulation, Music, and Dancing

Many of you know of my crazy thoughts and ideas to try to connect things together with contrasts and comparisons to help people understand concepts and ideas. Well…. Here goes another one of them!Dance

I find that people continuously struggle with understanding the true relationship of the scenario (defined as the collective information, tools, and techniques that are presented to participants of simulations) to the outcomes of the simulation. The confusion arises from the fact that people get inappropriate messaging during the formative times of their simulation careers.

People gain the idea that the scenario must be as real as possible, or perfect mimic some aspect of real life in healthcare in order to be effective instead of recognition that the sole purpose is to create a script and stage that allows participants to perform. Some people believe that the overall goal of simulation is to recreate reality. The sad part is, those misguided thoughts often lead to over-production of the scenario and that the scenario is the primary focus of the activity. This can lead to the unintended consequences of increasing the workload of the simulation relative to the value of performance improvement and/or introduce confusion to the participants of the scenario.  Neither of which are desirable.

It occurred to me recently that a terrific analogy can be made by evaluating the relationship of music, to competitive dance. As it turns out the scenario is simply the music.

Thinks about it. When a dancer or group of dancers are going to compete, a number of things must be in place. First, there is an understanding that the dance will be carried out with the playing of music. The activity will last a certain length of time, involve one or more people who are supposed to do certain things at certain times and that various details will be assessed or evaluated along the way. At times the evaluation maybe be structured to focus on improvement (formative) and perhaps feedback is shared along the way (deliberate practice preparing for a competition), while other times may it may be a high-stakes evaluation (summative) resulting in only a score (the actual competition).

Now let’s focus on the music. What is its purpose in a dance competition? If you think about it, the music providers the framework or backdrop against which the dancing activity occurs. It helps to coordinate the tone, the tempo, and the activities associated with the dance. If the objective is to assess a pair of dancers doing a waltz, then a waltz is played. So the learning objective would read, at the conclusion of this five minute activity, the participants will demonstrate the ability to perform a waltz. If we wanted to evaluate a Latin dance, we would play Latin music and have an appropriate assessment criterion by which to guide the improvement of the activity.

While it is technically possible for the assessment to occur in the absence of the music, it would be awkward for the participants and the evaluators as well. Further, a piece of music may be specifically chosen to encourage a certain dance move that would facilitate the evaluation of the activity, let’s say a twirl or a flip. If we needed to evaluate or score how well one performed a flip, a flip would need to occur during the dance.

When using the methods of simulation in the healthcare world, we need to see people dance. The dance we need to see is often a complex one involving the delivery of healthcare, but it is a dance none the less involving specific movements, communications, and other activities toward a specific goal There are times that we need to see individuals dance, other times teams.

If we are to evaluate a certain element of healthcare, then we must have carefully composed the music that propagated the desired activity to have occurred during the dance. As they dance, we perform an assessment with a goal of helping them improve through various feedback mechanisms. Such feedback may occur through active reflection and facilitated discussion (debriefing), self-reflection, peer to peer engagement, or perhaps in the delivery of a more formal score in the case of summative feedback.

The bigger point is, the scenario is constructed and executed (composed) to provide the background milieu to form the basis of the dance, i.e. have participants perform the activity that we wish to assess. We choose different types [of music] to play that is concordant with the activity we wish to evaluate. At times we play a tune that accentuates the evaluation of critical thinking skills, perhaps the performance of a complex skill, or maybe one that allows a whole team to dance together requiring teamwork that will benefit from feedback.

So, the next time you are composing your scenario, give careful consideration to the moves that you desire to evaluate. The music that plays should allow/encourage your dancers to perform the steps and activities that will be evaluated and turned into useful information to facilitate improvement.

Compose, have people dance and help them get better!

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August 19, 2019 · 11:50 am

Five Pearls for Debriefing 

Sharing some practical considerations to help you with your debriefing efforts!

 

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1. Before you begin attend to learner readiness 

Before you begin ensuring the emotional readiness of your learners will be a huge benefit. Learning during a debriefing can be enhanced by reducing distractions. Such distractions can occur from many possible origins. If learners are particularly stressed, angry or perhaps sad after a simulation experience it is best to let them process their emotions or otherwise emotionally and mentally prepare themselves to be able to focus on the content of the debriefing. So, taking a few minutes to observe, or perhaps even directly asking, “Are you ready?” may go a long way. Also, another tool that I use after a stressful simulation is to just acknowledge that there may be stress with a statement such as “Wow. That looked stressful. Are you guys ready to talk about it?” 

2. During the debriefing, listen to the learners, analyze their thoughts and understanding 

A structured debriefing should provide the opportunity to listen to learners. This allows the debriefer to analyze if the learners have a command of the facts and understanding of the intended learning associated with the simulation. It is easy to become impatient with the process and start telling the learners what they need to know. Once this occurs, it is difficult to assess what the learners do know and understand. As you listen to learners during the debriefing think about what you need to ask next, or where you need to take the conversation to be able to analyze the next area of content you wish to explore during the debriefing. So another tip is shift your thoughts to how can I discover if my learners know….. as opposed to the normal transmittal of information that comes from thinking I need to tell them X, Y and Z so that they understand. 

3. What went right is as important as what went wrong 

There is a saying that the negative screams and the positive whispers. This could not be truer when it comes to debriefing. It is far easier to remember what people did wrong during a scenario, then what they did right. But if you sit back and think about it, they are equally as important. Learners leaving a debriefing understanding that they did correctly and why it was correct, paired with an understanding what they did wrong and why it was wrong is critically important for improvement to occur. If the right things are not debriefed, it may be that they were done out of habit or luck and that the learners don’t understand it at all! Or worse yet, they could be perceived as unimportant. So a good tip is to jot some noted down of things that went correctly during a scenario. Trust me, you’ll remember all those mistakes which will be screaming! 

4. Keep the debriefing focused 

A challenge for anyone conducting a debriefing is to keep things focused. Learners love to talk about what learners want to talk about. However, it’s important as the facilitators of the conversation that we have the learners talking about what they need to be talking about. What learners need to be talking about should be driven by the learning objectives of the scenario. This direction needs to come from the debriefer. There is a delicate relationship that exists between the learners and the debriefer so carefully thinking about how to maintain this but being able to gently nudge the conversation back to the right pathway is a skill worth concentrating on. A tip is to develop some scripts that you are comfortable using when such nudging need to occur.  

Consider this example, “I agree that the exact dosage of the medication is critically important, but for this scenario and debriefing we are tasked with focusing on the effectiveness of the communications within the team. So, who can give me an example of effective communications that occurred during the scenario?”  

 5. Bring out summary/take home points 

Every simulation has a plethora of opportunities for learning. It is the job of the debriefer to ensure that the primary learning objectives of the simulation are covered. During complicated cases or cases with multiple learning objectives it is possible to cover a lot of ground along with many topics and facts during the time when you are analyzing the learners grasp of the content. It is important to close with summary points that are crucial take home messages. This can be challenging for some, and often turns into a mini lecture. And remember when you start lecturing to the learners, you are sacrificing the ability to ensure understanding where the learner is at that point and time. Concluding or beginning the wrap up of the debriefing by asking leaners to give one or two things that they think went well during the scenario along with what they would  change next time can be an effective probe into understanding that the learners took away the big learning messages. It also serves as the time to allow you to shape the discussion with further questions that drive home the intended take away points. Always think to yourself what are the two or three things that I want them to remember most from this experience a month from now. 

Well that’s is for now. Remember debriefing gets better with practice, feedback and experience. So, get out there, debrief, get some feedback and debrief again! 

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June 28, 2018 · 2:07 pm

Five Tips for Effective Debriefing

There is no doubt that debriefing is an important part of simulation-based education efforts. Further, to do a good debriefing is not necessarily easy. Practice, self-reflection and getting training can help dramatically.  Seeking out help form experts and experienced people can be invaluable. Also, there are many resources in which to learn more about debriefing. I encourage you to take advantage of them!

Here are just five random tips in no particular order to help you increase the effectiveness of your debriefing!

5tIPS

  1. Know what the goal(s) are. Be specific.

Too many times simulation scenarios are executed and the faculty member just kind of winging it during the debriefing. It is far more effective a strategy to be keenly aware of what the learning outcomes and goals are prior to the simulation. This will allow you to focus your thoughts and ideas on helping the participants get better during the simulation which can be carried forward to your debriefing efforts. If you are attempting to have the debriefing constrained to the learning objectives for the simulation it is often easier to organize the information and get across the salient points that are needed to achieve the learning outcomes. It is particularly important to remember that you can’t teach everything with every scenario. The participant brain can only take in or process so much information in any one setting. In this case think of a sponge completely saturated with water, that can’t take any more!

  1. Have a framework or structure in mind

Having a structure to your debriefing ahead of time, or perhaps adopting a model of debriefing can help you significantly overcoming the challenging parts of debriefing. Some of the challenges occur in organizing the information. There are a number of debriefing models out there for consideration of adoption. There is no reason to believe that one is better than the other. I highly recommend that you learn several models and become comfortable with them. What you’ll find is some models work better than others in varying situations based on s number of factors such as the experience and expertise of the debriefer, the subject matter that is the focus of the simulation, as well as the level of the learners.

  1. Involve all the learners

If you are debriefing a group of students a challenging task can be involving all the learners. Often times there will be one or two learners who engage in a dialogue with the debriefer and without conscious effort and skill it is easy to continue the dialogue and allow the other members of the participating team to feel potentially marginalized. Often times this dialogue occurs with the person that was in the “hotseat”. Making a conscious effort during the debriefing to include all of the students in a meaningful way can significantly create more learner engagement. Further, if you are running multiple scenarios I believe that engaging all the learners encourages them to pay closer attention if they are in an observation role for subsequent scenarios.

  1. Pull the ideas, don’t push the facts

I like to think of the debriefing as the time when we explore the learners thought processes. If we are transmitting information or pushing facts to them the situation can become more of a lecture. In fact I see many novice debriefers break into song and start delivering a mini lectures during attempts at debriefing. It is important to remember that when you are pushing the facts to the participants it limits the amount of assessment that you can do in terms of their understanding of the material and what you need to do to create deeper learning. So, if you find yourself making many declarative statements, pullback, and start to ask some questions. Encourage critical thinking, self reflection and ensure you are helping to create linkages of what went well during the scenario and why it was good, along with allowing the participants to discover and identify what they should do differently if they were to face a similar situation in real life or another simulation to improve.

  1. Create a summary of the take home points

Novice debriefers tend to struggle with creating an adequate summary. Also, Beware. This is another time that is at risk for the debriefing turning into a mini lecture. It is helpful to have a list of the major take-home points associated with the scenario. You can contextually adapt the summary to the performance that occurred during the simulation scenario even if you have the summary points written out prior to the simulation occurring. It is important to remember that during a debriefing many areas can be covered and touched upon. Learner should be engaged to identify the major learning points that they experience in the simulation, as well as understanding how the simulation was relevant to helping them become better healthcare providers.

So, this was intended to be five random tips on how to improve the effectiveness of your debriefing strategy. I hope that you found them useful!

Now, go forth and do great debriefings extra mission point

 

Until next time,

Happy Simulating!

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May 8, 2018 · 4:25 pm

Don’t be Confused! Every Simulation is an Assessment

 

Recently as I lecture and conduct workshops I have been asking people who run simulations how often they do assessments with their simulations. The answers are astounding. Every time there are a few too many people reporting that they are performing assessments less than 100% of the time that they run their simulations. Then they are shocked when I tell them that they do assessments EVERY TIME they run their simulations.

While some of this may be a bit of a play on words there should be careful consideration given to the fact that each time we run a simulation scenario we must be assessing the student(s) that are the learners. If we are going to deliver feedback, whether intrinsic to the design of the simulation, or promote discovery during a debriefing process, somewhere at some point we had to decide what we thought they did well and identify areas for needed improvement. To be able to do this you had to perform an assessment.

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Now let’s dissect a bit. Many people tend to equate the word assessment with some sort of grade assignment. Classically we think of a test that may have some threshold of passing or failing or contribute in some way to figure out if someone has mastered certain learnings. Often this may be part of the steps one needs to move on, graduate, or perhaps obtain a license to practice. The technical term for this type of assessment is summative. People in healthcare are all too familiar with such types of assessment!

Other times however, assessments can be made periodically with a goal of NOT whether someone has mastered something, but with more of a focus of figuring out what one needs to do to get better at what they are trying to learn. The technical term for this is formative assessment. Stated another way, formative assessment is used to promote more learning while summative assesses whether something was learned.

When things can get even more confusing is when assessment activities can have components or traits of both types of assessment activities. None the less, what is less important then the technical details is the self-realization and acceptance of simulation faculty members that every time you observe a simulation and then lead a debriefing you are conducting an assessment.

Such realization should allow you to understand that there is really no such thing as non-judgmental debriefing or non-judgement observations of a simulation-based learning encounter. All goal directed debriefing MUST be predicated upon someone’s judgement of the performance of the participant(s) of the simulation. Elsewise you cannot provide and optimally promote discovery of the needed understanding of areas that require improvement, and/or understanding of the topic, skills, or decisions that were carried out correctly during the simulation.

So, if you are going to take the time and effort to conduct simulations, please be sure and understand that assessment, and rendering judgement of performance, is an integral part of the learning process. Once this concept is fully embraced by the simulation educator greater clarity can be gained in ways to optimize assessment vantage points in the design of simulations. Deciding the assessment goals with some specificity early in the process of simulation scenario design can lead to better decisions associated design elements of the scenario. The optimizing of scenario design to enhance “assess-ability” will help you whether you are applying your assessments in a formative or summative way!

So, go forth and create, facilitate and debrief simulation-based learning encounters with a keen fresh new understanding that every simulation is an assessment!

Until Next Time Happy Simulating!

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March 23, 2018 · 12:00 pm

Three Things True Simulationists Should NEVER Say Again

From Wiktionary: Noun. simulationist (plural simulationists) An artist involved in the simulationism art movement. One who designs or uses a simulation. One who believes in the simulation hypothesis.

Woman taping-up mans mouth

 

After attending, viewing or being involved in hundreds if not thousands of simulation lectures, webinars, workshops, briefings and conversations there are a few things that I hear that make me cringe more than others. In this post I am trying to simmer it down to the top three things that I think we should ban from the conversations and vocabularies of simulationists around the globe!

1. Simulation will never replace learning from real patients!: Of course it wont! That’s not the goal. In fact, in some aspects simulation offers some advantages over learning on real patients. And doubly in fact, real patients have some advantages too! STOP being apologetic for simulation as a methodology. When this is said it is essentially deferring to real patients as some sort of holy grail or gold standard against which to measure. CRAAAAAAAZY……   Learning on real patients is but one methodology by which to attack the complex journey of teaching, learning and assessing the competence of a person or a team of people who are engaged in healthcare.  All the methodologies associated with this goal of education have their own advantages, disadvantages, capabilities and limitations. When we agree with people and say simulation will never replace learning from real patients, or allow that notion to go unchallenged, we are doing a short service to the big picture of creating a holistic education program for learners. See previous blog post on learning on real patients. 

2. In simulation, debriefing is where all of the learning occurs!: You know you have heard this baloney before. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh such statements are purely misinformed, not backed up by a shred of evidence, kind of contrary to COMMON SENSE, as well as demeaning to the participants as well as the staff and faculty that construct such simulations. The people who still make this statement are still stuck in a world of instructor centricity. In other words, “They are saying go experience all of that…… and then when I run the debriefing the learning will commence.” The other group of people are trying to hard sell you some training on debriefing and then make you think it is some mystical power held by only a certain few people on the planet. Kinda cra’ cra’ (slang for crazy) if you think about it.

When one says something to articulate learning cannot occur during the simulation is confirming that they are quite unthoughtful about how they construct the entire learning encounter. It also hints at the fact that they don’t take the construct of the simulation itself very seriously. The immersive experience that people are exposed to during the simulation and before the debriefing can be and should be constructed in a way that provides built in feedback, observations, as well as experiences that contribute to a feeling of success and/or recognition of the need for improvement. See previous blog post  on learning beyond debriefing

3. Recreation of reality provides the best simulation! [or some variant of this statement]: When I hear this concept even eluded to, I get tachycardic, diaphoretic, and dilated pupils. My fight or flight nervous system gets fully engaged and trust me, I don’t have any planning on running. 😊

[disclaimer on this one: I’m not talking about the type of simulation that is designed for human factors, and/or critical environmental design decisions or packaging/marketing etc. which depend upon a close replication to reality.]

This is one of the signs of a complete novice and/or misinformed person or sometimes groups of people! If you think it through it is a rather ludicrous position. Further, I believe trying to conform to this principle is one of the biggest barriers to success of many simulation endeavors. People spent inordinate amounts of time trying to put their best theatrical foot forward to try to re-create reality. Often what is actually occurring is expanding the time to set up the simulation, expanding the time to reset the simulation and dramatically increasing the time to clean up from the simulation. (All of the after mentioned time intervals increase the overall cost of the individual simulation, thereby reducing the efficiency.) While I am a huge fan of loosely modeling scenarios off of real cases in an attempt to create an environment with some sense of familiarity to the clinical analog, I frequently see people going to extremes trying to re-create details of reality.

We have hundreds and thousands of design decisions to make for even moderately complex scenarios. Every decision we make to include something to try to imitate reality has the potential to potentially cause confusion if not carefully thought out. It is easy to introduce confusion in the attempts to re-create reality since learners engage in simulation with a sense of hyper-vigilance that likely does not occur in the same fashion when they are in the real clinical learning environment. See previous blog post on cognitive third space.

If you really think about it the simulation is designed to have people perform something to allow them to learn, as well as to allow observers to form opinions about the things that the learner(s) did well, and those areas that can be improved upon. Carefully selecting how a scenario unfolds, and/or the equipment that is used to allow this performance to occur is part of the complex decision-making associated with creating simulations. The scenario should be engineered to exploit the areas, actions, situations or time frames that are desired focal points of the learning and assessment objectives.  Attention should be paid to the specifics of the learning and assessment objectives to ensure that the included cache of equipment and/or environmental accoutrements are selected to minimize the potential of confusion, create the most efficient pathway that allows the occurrence of the assessment that contributes improving the learning.

Lastly, lets put stock into the learning contract we are engaging in with our learners. We need to treat them like adult learners. (After all everybody wants to throw in the phrase adult learning principles…. Haha).

Let’s face it: A half amputated leg of a trauma patient with other signs and symptoms of hemorrhagic shock that has a blood-soaked towel under it is probably good enough for our adult learners to get the picture and we don’t actually need blood shooting out of the wound and all over the room. While the former might not be as theatrically sexy, the latter certainly contributes to the overall cost (time and resource) of the simulation. We all need to realistically ask, “what’s the value?”

While my time is up for this post, and I promised to limit my comments to only three, I cannot resist to share with you two other statements or concepts that were in the running for the top three. The first is “If you are not video recording your scenarios you cannot do adequate debriefing”, and the second one is “The simulator should never die.” (Maybe I’ll expand the rant about these and others in the future 😉).

Well… That’s a wrap. I’m off to a week of skiing with family and friends in Colorado!

Until next time,

Happy Simulating!

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January 29, 2018 · 6:18 pm

Don’t Let the Theory Wonks Slow Down the Progress of Healthcare Simulation

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Those of us in the simulation community know well that when used appropriately and effectively simulation allows for amazing learning and contributes to students and providers of healthcare improving the craft. We also know there is very little published literature that conclusively demonstrates the “right way to do it”.

Yet in the scholarly literature there is still a struggle to define best practices and ways to move forward. I believe it is becoming a rate limiting step in helping people get started, grow and flourish in the development of simulation efforts.

I believe that part of the struggle is a diversity of the mission of various simulation programs ranging from entry level students to practicing professionals, varying foci on individualized learning incompetence, versus and/or team working communications training etc. Part of the challenges in these types of scholarly endeavors people try to describe a “one-size-fits-all“ approach to the solution of best practices. To me, this seems ridiculous when you consider the depths and breadth of possibilities for simulation in healthcare.

I believe another barrier (and FINALLY, the real point of this blog post 🙂  is trying to overly theorize everything that goes on with simulation and shooting down scholarly efforts to publish and disseminate successes in simulation based on some missing link to some often-esoteric deep theory in learning. While I believe that attachments to learning theory are important, I think it is ridiculous to think that every decision, best practice and policy in simulation, or experimental design, needs to reach back and betide to some learning theory to be effective.

As I have the good fortune to review a significant number simulation papers it is concerning to me to see many of my fellow reviewers shredding people’s efforts based on ties to learning theories, as well as their own interpretations on how simulation should be conducted. They have decided by reading the literature that is out there (of which there is very little, if any, conclusive arguments on best practices) has become a standard.

My most recent example is that of a paper I reviewed of a manuscript describing an experimental design looking at conducting simulation one way with a certain technology and comparing it to conducting the simulation another way without the technology. The authors then went on to report the resulting differences. As long as the testing circumstances are clearly articulated, along with the intentions and limitations, this is the type of literature the needs to appear for the simulation community to evaluate and digest, and build upon.

Time after time after time more recently I am seeing arguments steeped in theory attachments that seem to indicate this type of experimental testing is irrelevant, or worse yet inappropriate. There is a time and place for theoretical underpinnings and separately there is a time and place for attempting to move things forward with good solid implementation studies.

The theory wonks are holding up the valuable dissemination of information that could assist simulation efforts moving forward. Such information is crucial to assist us collectively to advance the community of practice of healthcare simulation forward to help improve healthcare globally.  There is a time to theorize and a time to get work done.

While I invite the theorist to postulate new and better ways to do things based on their philosophies, let those in the operational world, tell their stories of successes and opportunities as they are discovered.

Or perhaps it is time that we develop a forum or publication of high quality, that provides a better vehicle for dissemination of such information.

So…… in the mean time….. beware of the theory wonks. Try not to let them deter from your efforts to not only move your own simulation investigations forward, but to be able to disseminate and share them with the rest of the world!

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January 9, 2018 · 2:48 am

FIVE TIPS on effectively engaging adult learners in healthcare simulation

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August 23, 2017 · 8:20 pm

Recreating Reality is NOT the goal of Healthcare Simulation

Discussing the real goals of Healthcare Simulation as it relates to the education of individuals and teams. Avoiding the tendency to put the primary focus into recreating reality, and instead providing the adequate experience that allows deep reflection and learning should be the primary focus. This will help you achieve more from your simulation efforts!

 

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March 15, 2017 · 10:25 pm

Fire Alarm Systems and Simulation Programs in Hospitals – What is the ROI?

shutterstock_278643779How do you respond to your financial administrator or controller of the purse strings when they ask you what the return on investment is for your hospital-based simulation program? It’s quite complicated.

Return on investment in today’s vernacular implies that there is a financial spreadsheet that can show a positive bottom line after revenue (or direct cost savings) and expenses are accounted for. This is really difficult to do with simulation.

I have seen business plan after business plan of simulation centers that have promised their administration that they will become financially positive and start bringing in big bucks for the institution in some given period of time. Usually it’s part of the business plan that justifies the standing up of the simulation center. I think I can count on one hand the simulation programs that have actually achieved this status. Why is this?

The answer is because calculating discrete return on investment from the simulation alone is extraordinarily difficult to do. While there are some examples in the literature that attempt to quantify in dollar terms a return on investment, they are however few and far between. It is largely confined to some low hanging fruit with the most common example and published in the literature focusing on central line training.

Successfully integrated hospital focused simulation programs likely have found a way to quantify part of their offerings in a dollars and cents accounting scheme, but likely are providing tremendous value to their organizations that are extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to demonstrate on spreadsheet.

What is the value the simulation center may bring to the ability of a hospital to recruit more patients because the community is aware of patient safety efforts and advanced training to improve care? What is the value of a simulation center in its ability to create exciting training opportunities that allow the staff to feel like the system is investing in them and ultimately helping with recruiting of new staff, along with retention of existing staff members?

What is the value or potential in the ability to avoid causing harm to patients such as mismanaged difficult airway because of simulation training of physicians and other providers who provide such care? What is the value of litigation avoidance for the same topic?

Also, the value proposition of the successfully implemented simulation program for patient safety extinguishes itself over time if it significantly reduces or eliminates the underlying problem. This is the so-called phenomenon of safety being a dynamic, nonevent. Going back to the more concrete example of airway if your airway management mishap rates have been essentially zero over several years, the institutional memory may become fuzzy on why you invest so much money and difficult airway training….. A conundrum to be sure.

I think of fire alarm systems in the hospital as similar situation Let’s compare the two. Fire alarm systems detect or “discover” fires, began to put the fire out, and disseminate the news. Simulation programs have the ability to “detect” or discover potential patient safety problems for the identification of latent threats, poor systems design or staffing for example. Once identified, the simulation program develops training that helps “put out” the patient safety threat. One could argue that the training itself is the dissemination of information that a patient safety “fire” exists.

Fire alarm systems and hospitals cost hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars to install and run on the annual basis. But the chief financial officer never asks what’s the return on investment? Why is that?

Well, perhaps it is a non-issue because fire alarm systems have successfully been written into law, regulations of building codes and so on. Regulation is an interesting idea for simulation to be sure but probably not for a long time.

However, if you think about it beyond a regulatory requirement, the likelihood of a given fire alarm system actually saving a life is probably significantly less probable then a well-integrated simulation program that is providing patient safety programs designed around the needs of the institution it serves. Admittedly the image of hundreds of people being trapped in a burning building is probably more compelling to the finance guy then one patient at a time dying from hypoxia from a mismanaged difficult airway.

Do you really know what to do when the fire alarm system goes off in your hospital? I mean we have little rituals like close the doors etc. But what next? Do we run? If we run, do we run toward the fire? Or away from the fire?  Do we evacuate all the patients? Do we individually call the fire department? Do we find hoses and start squirting out the fire?

When we conduct simulation-based training in hospitals that are aligned with the patient safety needs of the given institution we are extinguishing or minimizing the situation that patients will undergo or suffer from unintended patient harm. The existence of simulation programs and attention to patient safety education are a critical need for the infrastructure of any hospital caring for patients.

The more we can expand upon this concept and allow our expertise in simulation to contribute to the overall mission of the institution in reducing potential harm to patients and hospital staff, the more likely we will receive continuing support and be recognized as important infrastructure to providing the highest quality and safety to our patients.

Just like the fire alarm systems.

 

 

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