Latest Key Insights from Multiple Healthcare Simulation Experts

As part of HealthySimulation.com’s mission to provide the most up-to-date and comprehensive healthcare simulation information and trends from across the industry, the platform encourages simulationists from around the world to contribute meaningful articles. The goal is that both simulation educators and learners will read these insightful articles and be able to incorporate tips, tricks, lessons, and general knowledge shared into their own clinical simulation work. This HealthySimulation.com article highlights some of the recent medical simulation article submissions from leading clinical simulation experts – with a particular focus on military simulation, interpersonal simulation, and medical administration.

How to Use Low-Budget Props, Moulage to Set Healthcare Simulation Scenes
By Michelle Sherlin, RN, BSN, CHSE

There are many inexpensive and powerful ways to facilitate learning in a healthcare simulation scenario. There is a saying that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and this holds true for what learners see when they approach a learning environment in a healthcare simulation scenario. Instead of a picture, however, the simulationist uses moulage and props to make the “picture” come to life. This HealthySimulation.com article will explore successful and simple ways to get a healthcare simulation learning objective across using props, moulage, and backdrops.

Benefits of Professional Development for the Healthcare Simulation Teams
By Remy Roe

Continued education is paramount to the success of professionals in any field, especially those working in healthcare simulation where the stakes are high. A simulationist must constantly seek to develop themselves, their team, and their clinical simulation program if they are to fulfill their duties in enabling healthcare professionals to safely save and sustain life. The good news is that opportunities currently exist for such medical simulation training. The goal of this HealthySimulation.com article is to discuss the value of implementing professional development for any healthcare simulation team.

Word Choice Matters: Reception of Simulation-Based Learning is Impacted by Framing
By Jeanne Carey, RN, CHSE-A

Substitute teachers seldom garner a level of respect equal to that of the full-time teacher. Major League Baseball took years to recover from the employment of replacement players during the 1994-1995 strike. Fans are disappointed when the backup quarterback takes the field. Just as in the case with these scenarios, healthcare simulation-based learning suffers the same negative reception when this proven teaching strategy is thought of as a substitute, replacement, or backup for traditional clinical hours.

This HealthySimulation.com article discusses how, ultimately, word choice matters. Some words have a more positive or negative connotation. Yet, the use of these words, especially as they relate to healthcare simulation, can influence a person’s feelings toward other words in the same sentence.

Using Clinical Simulation to Improve the Medication Administration Process
By Jill Sanko

Medication administration errors contribute to thousands of patient deaths each year. Errors occur frequently related to missed actions in the medication use process with nearly 50% of all errors in doses and prescriptions attributed to missing a step. Recently the nursing community followed with dread the case of RaDonda Vaught whose workaround within her hospital’s incommodious med admin system led to a patient’s death and her criminal conviction.

The habit of overriding automated dispensing cabinets (ADC) has become so common, so concerning, and perceived as such a serious threat to patient safety that the Joint Commission has advocated for the use of an override assessment process for hospitals. This HealthySimulation.com article explains how healthcare simulation can certainly assist in improving systems, but clinical simulation is not always leveraged for this purpose in a meaningful way. This article suggests ways that healthcare simulation can be used to improve knowledge of how healthcare simulation and technology can help to prevent medication administration errors.

Getting Started With Inter-Professional Patient Simulation
By Michelle Sherlin, RN, BSN, CHSE

Health career learners, now more than ever, must be equipped with inter-professional skills to prepare for the transition to practice. Despite the impetus to enhance teamwork and collaboration at the patient bedside, many patient simulations operate with learners from only one health profession represented. Creating Interprofessional Education (IPE), aka interdisciplinary education, opportunities can appear daunting at first, but helpful resources do exist.

The Interprofessional Education Collaborative (IPEC) has established Core Competencies for Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (which include having shared values and mutual respect, understanding roles and responsibilities of various professions, team-based communication to improve health outcomes for patients and families, and working in teams to plan, deliver, and evaluate care). This HealthySimulation.com article looks at ways to simply develop IPE into clinical simulation experiences based on these competencies.

5 Important Comparisons Between Military and Civilian Clinical Simulation
By Remy Roe

Since the development of more affordable patient simulators like the SimMan in the mid-90s, clinical simulation has successfully expanded across numerous disciplines and professions in healthcare. In 1999, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS), a graduate nursing school and military medical school, established the first medical simulation center specifically targeting medical education and training.

The field of healthcare simulation would not be in use the same way today without the joint effort of military and civilian medicine. This HealthySimulation.com article written by Remy Roe provides clinical simulation champions with the opportunity to consider the similarities and differences of working with clinical simulation in the military versus civilian spaces.

World Patient Safety, Science, and Technology Summit 2022: Zeroing in on Medical Errors
By Jeanne Carey, RN, CHSE-A,

People make mistakes. When those people are physicians, nurses, or other healthcare professionals, mistakes can lead to patient harm or death. Medical errors claim the lives of over 3,000,000 patients every year. Globally, avoidable mistakes by healthcare professionals are believed to kill more people than HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis, combined.

Some estimates predict that one in 12 patients is impacted by a preventable medical error, but that number could be even higher as there is no central database tracking these figures in most countries, including the United States. This HealthySimulation.com article written recaps the Patient Safety Movement Foundation (PSMF)’s 2022 World Patient Safety, Science, and Technology Summit and shares how the conference addressed zeroing in on medical errors.

HealthySimulation.com appreciates all of the work these authors have put forth in creating these informative clinical simulation articles. If you would like to contribute as an author to HealthySimulation.com, fill out this Author Application Survey. For more information, please email Richard@HealthySimulation.com or call (424) 442-9530.

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