June 17, 2022By Lance Baily

INACSL 2022 Conference Recap: Advancing Nursing Simulation with a ‘Stronger Together’ Mindset

Each year, the INACSL Conference serves as a leading forum for healthcare simulation professionals, researchers, and vendors to provide the ideal environment to gain and disseminate current, state-of-the-art knowledge in the areas of skills, simulation operations, and applications in an evidenced-based venue. This year’s conference was the first in-person event following the COVID19 pandemic and focused on the theme “Stronger Together, taking place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin hosting over 700 nursing simulation champions from around the world. With 14 workshops, over 50 educational sessions, 60+ poster presentations, more than 25 exhibitors, and more than 15 Continuing Nursing Education (CNE) credits, INACSL offered valuable experiences, concepts, and networking opportunities. HealthySimulation.com was requested to support INACSL’s new Media Center in the exhibit hall, providing exclusive interviews of the non-profit’s leadership and key industry representatives. Stay tuned for those recorded conversations soon, but in the meantime, here is a recap of the key updates from #INACSL22, starting with the Hayden Vanguard Lectureship keynote lecture by Shelby Garner, Ph.D., RN, CNE on “An Innovative International Collaboration to Build a Program of Nursing Simulation Education and Research in India.”

Hayden Vanguard Lectureship Keynote

During this presentation, Dr. Shelby Garner provided an overview of strategies used to partner with nursing colleagues internationally to build simulation capacity in India through education and research for the last 10 years. Dr. Garner outlined the program of research which led to funding to build the first Simulation Education and Research Centre for Nursing Excellence in India. She shared evidence-based strategies for initiating and sustaining global simulation partnerships, including funding sources and ways to ensure culturally responsive simulation curriculum design, implementation, and evaluation. Her group believed they could help to improve the perspective of nursing in India, and increase professional development training outcomes through the use of nursing simulation. Starting with funding, Dr. Garner and her team worked with funding initiatives like Fulbright, USAID, USIEF, Phi Kappa Phi, and more — with the special note that working outside the United States has unique requirements which must be met.


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With that financial support the team was able to help to fund the launch of a new simulation center with the first CAE Healthcare Juno pediatric simulator in the country! However, Dr. Garner suggested that getting simulation effectively integrated into the curriculum took many years afterwords. Research highlighting Dr. Garner’s work includes:

Dr. Garner suggested that strong relationships are crucial for the success of an international simulation development program. Establishing connections between individuals in-person and virtually was an absolute must — and those clinical faculty who do not build close bonds usually leave the program too quickly.  She advised that teams be prepared for the flexibility of traveling internationally, recognizing the need to ready for cultural differences and the challenges of working in developing countries.

Interested Further? See the HealthySimulation.com CE/CME LEARN platform’s recent webinars Creating Obstetric Neonatal Emergency Simulations in Developing Countries and The Surgical Simulation Journey to Cure Blindness: Just Five Days to Competency with HelpMeSee.

Dr. Garner is an Associate Professor at Baylor University Louise Herrington School of Nursing where she teaches Consumer of Nursing Research in the undergraduate program. Dr. Garner’s primary research interest involves building nurse and health system capacity in India through the adaptation, design, and testing of innovative technologies such as simulation and mHealth applications to transform nursing education and improve patient care. For the last 10 years Dr. Garner has collaborated with global partners in Bengaluru, India, where she is the US Project Director for three new facilities in India, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), including a Simulation Education and Research Centre for Nursing Excellence, a Living and Learning Centre with Smart Classrooms, and a Women and Children’s Healthcare and Research Centre.


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HealthySimulation.com Supports INACSL’s New Sim Media Center

Following the success of the PressBox at IMSH 2022, INACSL leadership requested the support of HealthySimulation.com in capturing some key conversations and insights in the back of the vendor hall at the new Sim Media Center. HealthySimulation.com Founder/CEO Lance Baily provided key interviews with INACSL leadership, committee chairs, and industry experts on a variety of topics including the future of INACSL, the new Endorsement Program, the updated Standards of Best Practice, and as well a special interview with the CAE Healthcare sponsored Hayden Vanguard Lectureship Winner Dr. Shelby Garner, and a small panel on XR technologies featuring leadership from GigXR and SimX. Stay tuned in the weeks ahead to watch all these insider interviews from #INACSL22!

Some of the Sessions From INACSL22

Creating Consistency, Efficiency, and Effectiveness in Nursing Simulation (Presented by Connie Watson MSN, RN): Designing and facilitating high quality nursing simulations is often done inconsistently across a curriculum due to a variety of barriers. A simulation template supported with an inclusive simulation committee, are great tools for bringing consistency, efficiency, and effectiveness to a nursing program while providing faculty with simulation specific professional development.

Interprofessional Simulation Outreach for Rural Hospitals (Presented by Barbara Sittner PhD, Marisa Schaffer MSN): To meet the gaps in continuing education of rural hospitals, an interdisciplinary team of healthcare educators and providers identified simulation to address training needs for obstetric and neonatal emergent events. The INACSL Standards of Best Practice: Simulation were used to design simulation-based experiences (SBE) on postpartum hemorrhage, shoulder dystocia, maternal hypertension, neonatal resuscitation, and neonatal stabilization for transport. This presentation provides the team’s planning, design, implementation, and evaluation of the perinatal outreach simulation scenario for rural hospitals.

Creating Immersive 360 Videos – A Roadmap for Success (Presented by Michelle Aebersold PhD, Deborah Lee ACNP-BC): A series of immersive 360 videos were developed along with a facilitator guide and additional supportive materials. The team partnered with community partners and retired and active Military personnel. The use of immersive 360 video was an effective way to provide simulation-based education to nursing students and can be used virtually with minimal equipment needed. Throughout this project we developed a process to create immersive 360 virtual educational interventions. We will review that process and provide a roadmap to create similar assets. Participants will be able to utilize that roadmap to develop virtual assets that meet their own unique needs.

Virtual Simulation to Improve Medication Administration: Does it Work? (Presented by Denise Campbell DNP and Carman Turkelson DNP): Medication errors (ME) are among the most common preventable adverse events in health care. Medication administration (MA) is integrated throughout nursing programs; however, it remains one of the most difficult skills for students to master. An error with any step in this process may have unintended, serious, and even life threatening consequences. Use of an innovative combination of teaching strategies including virtual SBEs to expose nursing students to the repeated experiences of correctly administering medications proved to be highly valuable. Students indicated they had gained a deeper understanding and improved confidence in MA which will impact their performance as future nurses.

Friday morning’s plenary by Laura Gonzalez, PhD, INACSL President-Elect, Teresa Gore, PhD, Endorsement Program Lead  and Penni Watts, PhD, INACSL Standards Committee, focused on the launch of the new INACSL Endorsement Program, which will recognize simulation programs that can demonstrate an effective use of four of INACSL’s Healthcare Simulation Standards of Bests Practice during simulated experiences including: prebriefing, facilitation, debriefing and integrity. Already piloted by 11 programs, the audience was able to learn more about this new recognition program and the required assessment process — which compliments the certification and accreditation programs of other non-profit organizations such as SSH and SESAM. The presenters shared how simulation programs will perform a SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results) assessment and determine level of readiness and/practice gaps in their program, when aligned with endorsement criteria.

More About INACSL 2022



Also at the event, healthcare simulation professionals had the opportunity to network with colleagues and exhibitors, discuss best practices as it relates to competencies, safety, and quality performance indicators, and advance the science of clinical simulation. Conference objectives included being able to:

  • Experience the newest innovations in nursing simulation and learning resources while revisiting tried-and-true methodologies.
  • Explore future simulation opportunities using evidence-based practice.
  • Determine new directions for simulation and learning resource centers.
  • Explore strategies to integrate technology into curriculum and practice.
  • Examine the challenges of managing nursing simulation/learning resource centers.
  • Network with colleagues and experts.

More About INACSL

In 1976, a group of nursing educators from around the U.S. got together at the Health Education Media Association (HEMA) conference in New Orleans and began a dialogue. Among that first group of what would one day grow to become INACSL were Charlene Clark, Kathleen Mikan, Kay Hodson-Carlton, and Joanne Crow.

After the initial meeting, interested persons met at the Biennial North American Learning Resource Centers (LRC) Conference and the National Conference on Nursing Skills Lab on an annual basis. In 1999, a group informally began discussing the need to network throughout the year rather than limiting networking to conference gatherings. Interested leaders met again in 2001 and decided to create a formal organization. In April of 2002, the organization was named the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning (INACSL) and on January 3, 2003, INACSL was incorporated in the state of Texas.

With over 1,800 members worldwide, today the International Nursing Association for Clinical and Simulation Learning (INACSL) is an association dedicated to advancing the science of healthcare simulation. INACSL is accredited as a provider of continuing nursing education by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation.

Learn More About INACSL


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