Newest Clinical Simulation Research From Around the World
Healthcare simulation research is constantly being published, leading to greater insights across the greater clinical simulation community. HealthySimulation.com helps to compile updates and conclusions from this research to share with simulationists and learners worldwide. The research journals from which this information is published review and accept articles with the purpose of advancing the science of healthcare simulation. Often, these journal articles include information pertaining to virtual simulation advances, military simulation training efforts, the adoption of new clinical simulation equipment, a new serious game, and more. This HealthySimulation.com article highlights the newest healthcare simulation research articles from numerous research journals.
Published in Advances in Simulation, this research address that, while Latin American clinical simulation has had an important development; there have been no previous studies that characterize simulation centers and programs in the entire region. The aim of this work was to characterize the current state of clinical simulation-based education in the health sciences, to determine the structure of Latin American simulation centers in terms of teaching, research, and continuing medical education (CME), as well as to determine the perception of quality based on international standards of simulation practices for the directors of Latin American centers. To do so, the authors developed a quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional study with a demographic questionnaire and a Likert-type survey which they distributed to the directors of the healthcare simulation centers found in Latin America.
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The Technology-Enhanced Training Effectiveness Model (TETEM) has been used to assess the effectiveness of various technology-driven solutions in improving learners’ outcomes in multiple academic fields. However, limited research is available on the use of TETEM in the context of second language learning. Using a modified TETEM, this study published in Simulation & Gaming sought first, to assess the direct effects of learners’ attitudes and experiences with video gaming on their achievement; and second, to evaluate the effects of learners’ attitudes and experiences that are mediated by their motivation.
Perspectives of engagement in distance debriefings
Also published in Advances in Simulation, this research addresses how the COVID-19 pandemic propelled remote simulation and online distance debriefings. Like in-person debriefings, educators seek to facilitate reflective learning conversations, yet, in the online setting, educators face challenges to learner engagement that differ considerably from in-person debriefing.
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Authors Cynthia J. Mosher, Alex Morton and Janice C. Palaganas ultimately performed a thematic analysis of fourteen semi-structured interviews conducted with fourteen participants who had experience with virtual debriefing as an educator or as a learner. They then explored the experiences and perceptions of both educators and learners to provide a more in-depth understanding of the factors that influence engagement in online distance debriefing.
Published in Clinical Simulation in Nursing, this research article describes the rapid conversion of a face-to-face interprofessional (IP) disaster simulation to an online format in response to COVID-19 campus closures. The online disaster clinical simulation utilized internet-based tools allowing real-time collaboration between IP students. Team exercises involved disaster triage, disease outbreak investigation, and disaster response.
Surveys measuring self-assessment of various IP skills and healthcare simulation learning outcomes (SLOs) were compared with responses from previous face-to-face clinical simulations. Results indicated mean scores for IP skills were higher for online learners when compared with in-person simulations, and all SLOs were met. The online disaster simulation provided an effective, innovative IP educational opportunity.
According to the authors of this Simulation & Gaming research article, physiological changes resulting from aging can impair postural balance. Exergames have been used to treat balance disorders, enabling sensory-motor training due to their content, and with targeted goals and purposes beyond entertainment. The aim of the authors’ investigation was to describe the development of a serious game, VirtualTer, and to test content validity.
In this Advances in Simulation methodological intersection article, the authors describe how they developed a new variation of the established tabletop simulation modality, inspired by institutional ethnography (IE)-informed principles. They aimed to design and conduct pilot implementations of this innovative tabletop simulation modality, which focused uniquely on every day and every night work, along with the factors that govern that work.
In so doing, the authors also aimed to develop a modality and preliminary findings that researchers and educators can use to simulate healthcare practices across longer episodes of care (i.e., time scales of hours or an entire day) and to detect the ‘latent social threats’ that can emerge during interprofessional clinical care. An interprofessional team designed tabletop simulation scenarios of interprofessional challenges during transfers of care on a labor and delivery (L&D) unit.
Within each scenario, participants provided real-time explanations for their work and associated drivers, both independently and as a team. Authors combined “think-aloud” and clinical simulation principles to design tabletop healthcare simulation scenarios to elicit medical professionals’ descriptions of how they collaborate in their work on the L&D unit. They completed a total of five tabletop clinical simulations with eight participants. Participants described how the scenarios opened a productive dialogue between professional groups and suggested this clinical simulation-based approach might contribute to enhanced interprofessional understanding and cultural change.
Published in Simulation & Gaming, this study investigates how, against the backdrop of the cognitive-motivational process model proposed by Vollmeyer and Rheinberg (1998), the personality trait need for cognition in combination with a specific situation (short and long version of a live-action simulation game), current motivation, and immersion and flow (mediators) predict the learning outcome in the healthcare simulation game everyday life in the classroom (Starker & Imhof, 2014).
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Lance Baily, BA, EMT-B, is the Founder & CEO of HealthySimulation.com, which he started while serving as the Director of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas back in 2010. Lance is also the Founder and acting Advisor to the Board of SimGHOSTS.org, the world’s only non-profit organization dedicated to supporting professionals operating healthcare simulation technologies. His co-edited Book: “Comprehensive Healthcare Simulation: Operations, Technology, and Innovative Practice” is cited as a key source for professional certification in the industry. Lance’s background also includes serving as a Simulation Technology Specialist for the LA Community College District, EMS fire fighting, Hollywood movie production, rescue diving, and global travel. He and his wife Abigail Baily, PhD live in Las Vegas, Nevada with their two amazing daughters.
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