Simulcast

Official Broadcast: Australasian Sim Congress - In Situ Sim

Victoria Brazil and Ben Symon interviewed panelists from the final plenary for Day 1 at the ASC 

We heard from Alison Michaels and Steph Barwick about their Popup simulation program in Brisbane, and Cameron Knott from Victoria about how ISS can run in hospital practice. Simon Wilson then shared his insights into GP simulation, and Dylan Campher from CSDS in Queensland gave us an idea about how simulation centres are supporting ISS and patient safety in new ways.  

 

Official Broadcast: Australasian Sim Congress - Day 1 Wrap

Day 1 at the Australasian Simulation Congress in Sydney

Victoria Brazil and Ben Symon hosted a wrap of Day 1 at the ASC, with a focus on teamwork and In situ Simulation. 

Keynote speaker Eduardo Salas presented the highlights of 30 years of teamwork research, and we interviewed him after the session, concentrating on some ways forward for research and practice in this area. We also captured a few delegate perspectives. 

We also spoke to ASC convenor Jessica Stokes- Parish about running simulations on stage and wat the exhibitors had in store for us. 

Advances in Simulation: From Research to Policy, How Much Evidence is Enough?

In the second of our series with Advances in Simulation, we consider Ryan Brydges 2016 editorial - From simulation research to education policy: how much evidence is enough?  

In this article he considers the question - What level of evidence is required for translation of healthcare simulation research to policy? or institutional practice ? 

Ryan uses the specific example of recent changes to nursing training in the USA as a result of a large simulation study. The editorial considers issues of methodology and ‘tipping points’, and comes from the perspective of a researcher who has authored a number of large scale systematic reviews in healthcare simulation  

The study discussed is the NCSBN National Simulation Study: a longitudinal, randomized, controlled study replacing clinical hours with simulation in prelicensure nursing education. By Hayden JK, Smiley RA, Alexander M, Kardong-Edgren S, Jeffries PR in the Journal of Nursing Regulation. 2014;5(2):S3–S40. 

In a short period of time this study has led to large scale changes in nursing education whereby up to 50 % of clinical hours in undergraduate nursing training can be replaced by simulation. Note this has also brought with it some clarity in standards around simulation within those programs. 

Simulcast was fortunate to have Ryan as our guest author of the editorial, together with Suzan Kardong Edgren, one of the authors of the nursing simulation study, as well as Mary Fey fromm Center for Medical Simulation in Boston as a discussant. 

Ryan Brydges (@rbrydges) is a health professions educator from Toronto Canada, and Senior Editor at Advances. 

He’s the professor in technology enabled education at St Michaels’s hospital/ University of Toronto, and the research directors at the simulation centre there. He’s been involved in systematic reviews and meta-analysis on large landmark studies in sim and technology enabled learning – research gate profile 

Mary Fey is the Associate Director of the Simulation Educator Training program (IMS) within the Centre for Medical Simulation in Boston. She has a nursing and academic background, with a PhD University of Maryland in Baltimore.  

Suzan "Suzie" Kardong-Edgren is a professor and director of the RISE Center at the School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Robert Morris University.  

The podcast offers a deep dive into the impact of simulation research and the politics of policy and change. We discussed contemporary influences on education more broadly, such as the Carnegie Foundation, and other educational policy changes such as the Competency by Design initiative in Canadian medical training. 

However the winner on the day was the discussion itself – a wonderful example of how those with different perspectives – clinical, research, practice and education – can have robust and respectful conversations.  

Thanks to our guests and to Advances for another great collaborative effort 

 

Victoria

Simulcast Journal Club Podcast - Ultrasound Special Edition

 

Resa Lewiss (@ultrasoundREL) joined Simulcast for this month’s journal club – reviewing a paper focused on the use of simulation for assessment of point of care ultrasound (POCUS) skills. 

Resa is an emergency physician, self described ‘global soul’, and experienced educator and thought leader in POCUS. 

The paper discussed was Collecting Validity Evidence for Simulation-Based Assessment of Point-of-Care Ultrasound Skills by Jensen et al in J Ultrasound Med 2017 

The paper concludes that the simulation based assessment process they examined was a valid tool for POCUS skills assessment, promising significant savings where human assessors can be replaced to some extent by the machine. 

Resa helped us understand the specific context of POCUS and the background to how these skills have been traditionally assessed. Her review of the use of simulation in ultrasound can be found here. 

The process described in the article is instructive for thinking about how to establish validity for other simulation based assessment processes. We conclude that there is much more ‘automated assessment’ to come – with significant opportunities but with a caution to rigorously ‘test the tests’. 

 

Victoria Brazil  

Simulcast Book Review - 'Healthcare Simulation Education: Evidence Theory and Practice'

Michelle Kelly (@KellyKelmich) was our guest on Simulcast for the inaugural Book Review, discussing Healthcare Simulation Education: Evidence Theory and Practice – a recently published textbook for the simulation practitioner.  

Editors Debral Nestel, Michelle Kelly, Brian Jolly and Marcus Watson have drawn together a diverse range of authors to produce a comprehensive, but disciplined, review of current theory and practice in healthcare simulation.  

Michelle is a simulation academic and practitioner from Curtin University in Perth and past chair of the Australian Society for Simulation in Healthcare (ASSH). Her academic publications and extensive sim experience have made her well placed to edit the book, and to discuss some ‘big picture’ issues in healthcare sim. 

In the podcast we discuss highlights from the book, the writing process, simulation terminology, and predictions for the future.  

Simulcast Journal Club Podcast 7

In our July journal club podcast Ben and Vic discuss the paper of the month. 

Peterson, Dawn Taylor PhD; Watts, Penni I. PhD, RN, CHSE-A; Epps, Chad A. MD; White, Marjorie Lee MD, MPPM, MA, CHSE (2017)   “Simulation Faculty Development : A Tiered Approach” Simulation in Healthcare : The Journal of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. Publish Ahead of Print, POST AUTHOR CORRECTIONS, 18 March 2017. 

 

We then covered some interesting stuff on simulators dying 

Weiss et al. Does the unexpected death of the manikin in a simulation maintain the participants’ perceived self-efficacy? An observational prospective study with medical students.   

BMC Medical Education (2017) 17:109 DOI 10.1186/s12909-017-0944-x 

 

And a deep dive into team science 

Rosenman et al.  Changing Systems Through Effective Teams: A Role for Simulation. Acad Emerg Med. 2017 Jul 20. doi: 10.1111/acem.13260. [Epub ahead of print] 

 

Looking forward to another great discussion  

Ep. 9 - The Trojan Horse of Simulation

 

The dasSMACC (social medial and critical care) conference was recently held in Berlin. Simulation was a theme woven throughout the conference, and we thought a simulcast episode recapping on some of the messages and themes was timely.

Smacc has arguably redefined the way we think about medical conferences – great speakers, great messages, hard core critical care in an engaging format.

This year, simulation activities were embedded in main stage talks, workshops, panel discussions and the ‘Sim Haus’ we previewed in a recent Simulcast episode.

A series of linked main stage talks from Clare Richmond, Chris Hicks and Jon Gatward gave us a framework for thinking about simulation modalities and matching method to objective. Following the journey of a head injured patient, we saw performances by actor Renee Lim, the incredibly realistic manikin made by Lifecast, and how end of life discussions, organ donation, cognitive biases can be addressed using simulation just as well as the action sequences involving airway management of a head injury.

Also on the main stage - Brian Burns opening talk wasn’t about simulation, but rather was a futuristic trauma simulation in which he demonstrated the ways technology might improve our pre-hospital trauma care in the not too distant future, including drone delivered blood products.

Jenny Rudolph gave us a practical insight and skills for dealing with ‘WTF’ moments, by seeking out the underlying frames for behaviour we find annoying or disappointing. She led a whole of audience exercise in resetting our response from unhelpful emotion to curiosity, bringing to life her longstanding work in double loop learning and debriefing using advocacy inquiry.    

The interprofessional panel discussion (aka ‘the tribalism panel’) sparked conversations about how simulation can be an agent of culture change, but also how deliberate our strategies need to be in making our educational outcomes truly interprofessional.

Both Jesse and I were involved in the education panel on Day 3 where simulation was again a core theme, especially as it pertains to preparing learners for the future, connecting with quality improvement in hospitals, and integrating into everyday work. Walter Eppich’s work on how to take our debriefing skills into the clinical area through coaching conversations received a lot of attention. As the Twitter moderator, Jesse wonderfully captured some audience questions and responses in this storify.

Pre-conference workshops on Debriefing, Leave the Sim Lab behind and Stress Inoculation were a chance for attendees to deep dive with internationally respected faculty. Jan Schmutz presented his recent work on team reflexivity in the debriefing workshop (an enlightening read, but you will need to concentrate).

The last of those workshops connected with a presmacc meeting in London – the Performance Psychology in Medicine Seminar. This fantastic program connected the worlds of high performance in pre-hospital care, other healthcare, elite sport and on stage. The event highlighted work like Mike Lauria’s Psychological skills to improve emergency care providers performance under stress, and others like Vicki Leblanc.

 

The Sim Haus was a dedicated physical space within the conference venue, which housed industry displays and ‘meet the experts’ session. There was some fascinating new technology and an atmosphere of sharing sim ideas and challenges.

 

Where to for more?

Feel free to go back to #dasSMACC and also #simHaus, and of course wait for the talks and podcasts to be released on the smacc website and podcasts over the year.

Next smacc conference is in Sydney February 2019

Advances in Simulation - The Simulcast Collaborative

Simulcast is pleased to announce a collaboration with Advances in Simulation, an open access simulation journal based in Europe. In this interview with Editor in Chief Professor Debra Nestel (@DebraNestel), we profile the content, people and philosophy of the journal.  

Debra is already a friend of Simulcast, and wrote the expert commentary for our September 2016 Journal Club. 

Our plan is to produce a bi-monthly podcast featuring an article from Advances, with an interview with the author, and editor or another discussant. Our aim is to continue to connect the simulation community across geography, discipline and modality, and to help research to be translated to practice. This series will complement our ongoing Journal Club (which will still feature articles from across the relevant journals) and our usual podcasts. 

In this podcast, we take the opportunity to talk about diverse applications in simulation, peer review, open access journals, standards for simulated patients and the ethics of simulation.  

A wonderful chance to listen to a friend and mentor to many in the simulation community. 

Look out for our podcast with Ryan Bridges and his editorial “From simulation research to education policy: how much evidence is enough?”. Advances in Simulation 20161:22  

Simulcast Journal Club Podcast 6

In our June journal club podcast Ben and Vic discuss the paper of the month. 

Cheng et al. “Coaching the Debriefer: Peer Coaching to Improve Debriefing Quality in Simulation Programs” Simulation in Healthcare : The Journal of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. Publish Ahead of Print, POST AUTHOR CORRECTIONS, 20 May 2017 

Ben summarised the blog discussion and Walter Eppich’s expert opinion. 

 

We then reviewed some recent papers 

Roussin CJ1, Weinstock P.  SimZones: An Organizational Innovation for Simulation Programs and Centers. Acad Med. 2017 May 30. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001746. [Epub ahead of print] 

And 

Bong et al. The effects of active (hot-seat) versus observer roles during simulation-based training on stress levels and non-technical performance: a randomized trial. Advances in Simulation (2017) 2:7 

DOI 10.1186/s41077-017-0040-7  (Open Access) 

And Ben introduced next month’s paper on simulation faculty development. 

Looking forward to another great discussion  

Vic 

Pause & Discuss - Silver Q Interprofessional Sim Program

Norma Robinson leads an interprofessional simulation program involving medical students from University of Queensland Rural Clinical School and nursing students from the University of Southern Queensland. 

The program is based in Toowoomba but has now been scaled up to include students from many part of rural southern and central Queensland. 

Interprofessional education and teamwork training at the student level has been a challenging area, although with some excellent programs, and I think simulation is at least part of the solution. 

Norma was kind enough to host me for a visit and I spoke to her afterwards about the program, the motivations for interprofessional education, and how to really build a healthcare workforce to serve a community.