September 21, 2021By Lance Baily

Best Healthcare Simulation Articles of Summer 2021

As summer 2021 comes to an end, HealthySimulation.com has compiled a list of the best healthcare simulation articles from the past few months. These articles range from COVID-19 responses and precautions to virtual simulation learning solutions. By exploring these clinical simulation articles, simulation administrators, educators and other healthcare professionals can gain insights into relevant industry information. Please be sure to share this article with all your clinical simulation colleagues to help convey all that has happened during the past summer.

Why Healthcare Simulation is About to Become One of the World’s Most Important Industries

Healthcare simulation is about to change the world. While societies are just beginning to turn a corner on COVID-19, the devastation caused by the most recent pandemic will continue to affect us for years to come. With over 142 million cases and 3 million deaths, the estimated COVID-19 costs of $28 trillion dollars will no doubt force governments, corporations, militaries, healthcare institutions and the general public to carefully reassess their pandemic readiness. In their 2021 annual letter, Bill and Melinda Gates share several innovative strategies for overcoming future pandemics, including the creation of a specialized group of about 3,000 “Infectious Disease Responders” who will be ready at a moment’s notice to travel and contain outbreaks around the world. How will top scientists, healthcare teams, biohazard specialists, security personnel, and logistics operators plan and train for one of the world’s most important and most dangerous jobs? This article discusses how the emerging medical simulation industry is primed for a transition to mass adoption.


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Collection of Healthcare Simulation Policies and Procedures Manuals

Clinical simulation labs and programs tend to have a set of policies and procedures in place to help govern the use of their resources while ensuring fairness in opportunity. To help empower learners to deliver the best possible care to every patient, labs and programs must strive to promote a culture of excellence and elevated patient care. Through the development of healthcare simulation policies and procedures, facilitators are able to better position themselves and their respective facilities to meet these goals. This article contains a number of programs that have implemented such standards.

Healthcare Simulation’s Refurbished Simulator Market Takes Off

Being able to distribute healthcare simulation products that have been previously returned to a manufacturer or vendor for various reasons is an important way to reallocate resources and avoid waste. As clinical simulation becomes increasingly in demand, and not all facilities and institutions can afford patient simulators, the refurbished simulator market presents numerous opportunities. There are a number of healthcare simulation community resources that can help to connect educators and simulationists with refurbished simulators to help boost their respective programs. This article shares information about these resources, and where refurbished simulators can be found.


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GIGXR Awarded Contract to Develop XR Simulation Training for Air Force Academy

Immersive learning system and mixed reality healthcare applications company GIGXR announced on July 13, 2021 that the company had received a $750,000 Phase II Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contract from AFWERX. This contract will be used to develop Extended Reality (XR) simulation training to help the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA). Specifically, the funding will be allocated to developing HoloChem, a new mixed reality application for USAFA 100 and 200 level chemistry courses. This article discusses how HoloChem will then be used to help cadets improve learning and engagement in vital chemistry studies.

Tips to Use Clinical Simulation to Address Conformity Behaviors

In order to conform to cultural norms and/or hierarchies, healthcare professionals and learners may make clinical decisions that they know to be incorrect or for which they have insufficient knowledge to determine a safe intervention. In this article, HealthySimulation.com shares a recent publication titled, “Twelve tips for using simulation to teach about conformity behaviors in medical education,” by Ghazwan Altabbaa, Tanya N Beran, Michelle Arlene Drefs, and Elizabeth Oddone Paolucci. This article offers 12 tips for educators in the use of clinical simulation to help healthcare learners understand how social influences affect their clinical decision-making behaviors.

TruCorp Advanced Airway Trainers Enhance EMS Education

TruCorp is a medical simulation task trainer company that specializes in anatomically correct airway management simulators, clinical skills task trainers and surgical simulation trainers. To help advance realistic airway management and emergency procedure training, the company’s intubation heads and innovative AirSim product lines are designed based on CT data scanned from actual human patients. From the silicone skin covering to the articulation of the neck and jaw, the advanced airway trainers have a lifelike feel and responsiveness, making every training session more true to life. In this article, HealthySimulation.com takes a close look at the complete range of AirSim X trainers available from TruCorp.

Market Analysis: Are VR Medical Simulations Ready to Scale?

Submitted by VR/XR designer and business consultant Howard Rose following a series of interviews with leading clinical simulation experts, this healthcare simulation article takes a snapshot of the current state of VR/XR in medical simulation to assess the state of maturity of this emerging technology. The article also evaluates the current level of simulation in healthcare adoption, and points out the barriers that stand between where we are now and a time when medicine can broadly benefit from the ubiquitous use of VR med sims at scale.

Navigate Simulation Education Management with a 360° View

Clinical simulation is one way that healthcare educators can go beyond assuming that their learners understand their training — rather, both the educator and learner should be confident in their skills. To help instill this confidence, CAE Healthcare’s LearningSpace is a video-driven clinical education management solution designed to improve clinical performance with an audiovisual component. Explained within this article, the A/V component provides an opportunity to record, annotate and debrief performance for real-time and post-event assessments.

Axon Park Expands VR Course Offerings to Meet Virtual Learning Demand

As more medical training facilities turn to healthcare simulation as a virtual means of instruction amid COVID-19, virtual reality and e-learning solutions have been met with demand like never before. To help meet this need, virtual simulation company Axon Park has significantly expanded their VR course catalog, from one to over 20 categories, making it the most diverse set of VR training materials offered in the healthcare space. Using VR, learners can “teleport” into the digital campus where they can then explore different categories of courses to learn varying subjects and skills. As this article explains, this helps streamline access to a wide range of premier interactive VR learning content.

Patient Safety Movement Survey Shows 58% of Patients Concerned About Medical Errors

According to the Patient Safety Movement Foundation (PSMF), a global non-profit committed to achieving zero preventable patient harm and death across the globe by 2030, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States. Further, the organization reports that before the COVID-19 pandemic began, globally more than 8,220 people were dying in hospitals in ways that could have been prevented every day — that’s six people per minute. To help better identify the current state of medical errors and patient safety, this article shares the released PSMF results from the organization’s “2021 Patient Safety Awareness Poll.”

Sentinel U Product Portfolio Presents Realistic, Virtual Patient Encounters

In the world of clinical simulation, virtual patient simulation scenarios and learning modules have become increasingly in demand. To help meet this need, Sentinel U has developed a number of digital solutions designed to sharpen clinical reasoning, decision-making skills, and critical thinking competency while learners face realistic patient encounters. According to the company, learners benefit from robust learning experiences that independent research has shown to be effective and achieve required competencies. This HealthySimulation.com article highlights the various solutions developed by Sentinel U, while sharing product benefits and features as well.

Sim Scenario Authoring Tool iRIS Increases University’s Remote Collaboration

Imagine if there was a way to create healthcare simulation scenarios which could be used across different settings, with varying resources, and with the potential to enhance the care of a large number of patients. This is a reality today with iRIS, an innovative and engaging, web-based healthcare simulation scenario authoring platform from UK-based iRIS Health Solutions Limited, which is also distributed by CAE Healthcare. The case study discussed in this article shares the impact of iRIS at UT Health San Antonio, which implemented it to enhance their scenario design and use of clinical simulation.

NCLEX Changes Require Human Component During Clinical Simulation

For some time now, hospital administrators and staff have found that many novice nurses lack the necessary skills for treating patients. To address this gap, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) has developed the Clinical Judgement Measurement Model, part of the Next Generation NCLEX (NGN). This shares how the model was designed based on nursing literature, pedagogy, psychology, decision science, and investigated data from more than 200,000 NCLEX candidates. Proving the need for such advances in healthcare education, a 2011 study in the Journal of Nursing showed that only 20% of employers were satisfied with the decision-making abilities of new nurses. Even among experienced nurses, a 2004 study in Quality and Safety in Healthcare found that up to 65% of adverse patient events were not only preventable but were the result of poor clinical decision-making.

Remedy Simulation Group Releases Nursing 101 Kit

Nursing simulation plays an integral part of the comprehensive training and skills development required before treating real human patients. To help provide clinical simulation educators with all of the resources needed, Remedy Simulation Group has developed and released a Nursing 101 Training Kit. This specially packaged kit was assembled with help from our University and Simulation Lab partners to address your simulation labs core needs. This kit includes everything needed to aid in the training of Injection, IV administration, Venipuncture, Catheterization, Diabetic Testing and Wound Care Dressing. This article describes each of the products contained in the kit.

UCF Installs Impressive Dr. Hologram Technology to Improve Healthcare Simulation Education

Today’s most innovative hologram technology is being used in an academic setting to provide unique healthcare simulation education experiences. This Fall, the University of Central Florida (UCF) will be providing learners with the opportunity to experience holograms in the classroom for the first time. The very lifelike live-action holograms are specifically designed to help healthcare learners better understand patient safety and overall care. This shares how the realistic hologram experience is made possible by employing a piece of equipment called PORTL.

Covid 2.0: Is Your Clinical Simulation Program Ready?



The transition to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic forced a reimagining of many clinical simulation programs. Just when the worst was seemingly behind, the COVID-19 delta variant emerged. This variant has proven more contagious than other variants and is wreaking havoc on the younger generation, in contrast to the alpha variant, which heavily affected the older generation. This article discusses how most clinical simulation programs were not ready for initial shutdowns and were converted to virtual learning in early 2020.

Avkin’s Vital Signs Package Helps Clinical Simulations Maintain Realism

Patients don’t announce their vital signs to their healthcare providers. Nor does an ominous voice from on high. However, many healthcare simulations, including competency-based human simulations, do just that. This break in realism can distract both learners and Simulated Participants from the goal of the clinical simulation, harming learning objectives. Some programs have opted to simply use real devices, and use the Simulated Participant’s actual vital signs in the simulation to combat this break from realism. This may work until a cardiac arrest simulation reports a patient blood pressure of 120/80.

Advisory Groups: An Often-Untapped Resource for Clinical Simulation Programs

Given the breadth and depth of responsibilities associated with administering a high-quality healthcare simulation program, directors or managers understand the importance of utilizing every available resource. However, too many program administrators are leaving an asset that has the potential to yield huge benefits untapped. An advisory group can provide the strategic advice and essential skills needed to take a clinical simulation program to the next level. This article shares how supplementing specific areas where the program lacks knowledge or expertise, with advisory groups can help leaders make better decisions and get more done.

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