I was having an exit interview meeting with one of my graduating simulation fellows, and he asked me an interesting question for his last day. He said, “Dr. Paul, what is simulation?” I thought this was perplexing after a year-long intense study of simulation with us at our Institute! It was quite insightful, though. One of his observations was that there are many ways to do simulations right. He had many experiences throughout the year, visiting other simulation centers, attending international meetings, and teaching with us at different facilities. He realized many different vantage points ..read more

HUMBLE: Six Traits That Will Make You a Better Simulation Educator and Lead Better Debriefings Excelling as a educator in the healthcare simulation field goes beyond just imparting knowledge; it requires a unique set of qualities that can truly make a difference in students’ learning experiences. The acronym HUMBLE focuses on six key traits that can help educators better design, facilitate, and lead more effective debriefings. These traits include Humility, Understanding, Mindfulness, Balance, Learning, and Engaging. In this blog post, I will delve into these traits and explore how they can e ..read more

Simulation is a powerful tool in healthcare education to enhance learning and improve patient outcomes. Through simulation-based learning encounters, participants can engage in hands-on experiences that mimic real-life situations, allowing them to develop critical skills and knowledge. The success of healthcare simulation educational encounters relies on the participants and the facilitators who guide and support the learning process. Understanding the psychological contract that needs to exist between participants, facilitators, and content designers, is crucial in creating a positive and eff ..read more

The social psychologist Barbara Fredrickson coined the phrase, “The negative screams while the positive only whispers.” I don’t know about you, but this is extraordinarily true when reviewing course evaluations after simulation-based education programs! Post-course evaluations are essential in measuring the program’s effectiveness and participant perceptions and are a tool to help with quality improvement initiatives. However, the feedback from vocal minorities can sometimes overshadow the opinions of the silent majority. After pouring blood, sweat, and tears into creating what you believe to ..read more

Obviously, we are happy that simulation has become a popular method of education in healthcare. Simulation can provide a hands-on approach to learning that allows participants to experience real-life situations in a safe and controlled environment. However, while simulation has many benefits, it’s not necessarily the best option for every type of education.  When we engage simulation as a modality, it is relatively complex, expensive and resource intensive compared to other educational methodologies. That all being said we all know at times it is an irreplaceable methodology that allows ..read more

It is quite common to mistakenly believe that there needs to be a diagnostic mystery associated with a simulation scenario. This could not be further from the truth. Sometimes it arises from our clinical hat being confused with our educator hat (meaning we let our view of the actual clinical environment become the driving factor in the design of the scenario.) We must carefully consider the learning objectives and what we want to accomplish. One of the powerful things about simulation is that we get to pick where we start and where we stop, as well as the information given or withheld during ..read more

I want to make a comparison between Sherlock Holmes and the students of our simulations! It has important implications for our scenario design process. When you think about it, there’s hypervigilance amongst our students, looking for clues during the simulation. They are doing so to figure out what we want them to do. Analyzing such clues is like the venerable detective Sherlock Holmes’s processes when investigating a crime. Video version of this post This has important implications for our scenario design work because many times, we get confused with the idea that our job is to create realit ..read more

One of the most important concepts in simulation-based assessment is achieving reliability, and specifically interrater reliability. While I have discussed previously in this blog every simulation is assessment, in this article I am speaking of the type of simulation assessment that requires one or more raters to record data associated with the performance or more specifically an assessment tool. Interpreter reliability simply put is that if we have multiple raters watching a simulation and using a scoring rubric or tool, that they will produce similar scores. Achieving intermittent reliabili ..read more

I wanted to discuss some ideas of using adjuncts as part of your debriefing. When we think about debriefing, we often think about a conversation between faculty member or members and participants of simulation with a focus on everyone developing an understanding of what they did right as well as what they need to improve upon.  We rarely think about the possibility of including other “things” to enhance the learning that comes from the debriefing. I tend to incorporate adjuncts into a many of the debriefings associated with courses that I design.  What I mean is things that added int ..read more

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 ..read more