Can Healthcare Simulation Help Mitigate Clinician Burnout?

Can Healthcare Simulation Help Mitigate Clinician Burnout?

Healthcare worker burnout is a huge issue across the world with both personal and professional implications. Burnout is a phenomenon described to consist of three elements which are emotional exhaustion, cynicism and depersonalization, reduced professional efficacy and personal accomplishment. This exclusive HealthySimulation.com article by Erin Carn-Bennett, RN, MSN, will explore the concept that healthcare simulation is an educational tool that should be considered as a potential tool to assist to combat burnout of the healthcare workforce.

Burnout Definition and Why This Matters

Burnout is described in almost all career paths, however healthcare staff are at high risk for burnout. Burnout can cause personal harm such as substance abuse, broken relationships and mental health complications. Professional consequences of burnout include: lower patient satisfaction, impaired quality of clinical care and medical errors or even malpractice. Staff burnout can lead to poor patient outcomes through a reduced amount of staff time spent with patients, lack of compassion and reduced identification of clinical deterioration. Burnout can also affect organizational culture and also attributes to high staff turnover and decreased satisfaction in the workplace.

Healthcare simulation is the bridge between the classroom and clinical care. Clinical simulation can sometimes be described as a bright space and has been demonstrated as a psychologically safe space to improve healthcare staff confidence and anxiety, make mistakes and explore learning points. Many healthcare staff see clinical simulation as a hopeful space to explore difficult emotions and to talk about workplace organizational challenges that impact the healthcare workforce.

Healthcare Simulation Faculty Have Useful Skills To Assist

Clinical simulation faculty members are often highly trained in the art to read people’s actions, body language and behaviors in order to safely explore these observations in debrief. This is also a hopeful space for clinical simulation faculty to be able to potentially identify staff with signs of burnout and provide appropriate self care suggestions in a sensitive manner that is empathetic, encouraging and not shameful towards clinical staff. However, this is a careful balance as to not want to overstep boundaries and want to “fix others” and should be approached with much sensitivity, emotional intelligence and caution.


View the HealthySimulation.com Webinar Transformative Healthcare Simulation: 7 Layers of Change to learn more!


Improvement of workplace organizational culture has been shown to occur through healthcare simulation. Clinical simulation can be a useful space to challenge hierarchy, participant assumptions of one another and their colleagues, and improve interpersonal relationships through shared perspectives. Burnout levels are impacted on by organizational culture in different clinical spaces. Healthcare simulation offers a safe container for different disciplines to train together and develop connections through shared educational experiences.

Healthcare Simulation Debrief is a Protected Space

Clinical simulation programs are in many organizations felt to be a psychologically safe space to voice and explore challenges without fear of personal and professional repercussions. Clinical simulation is also often described as a confidential or open for discussion space. Healthcare professionals often lack space to reflect on personal and professional challenges in such spaces. Clinical simulation debrief circles are a great opportunity for individuals to consider how they would like to improve their clinical career and also tools that will assist to enable them to meet these goals.


View the new HealthySimulation.com Community Nursing Simulation Group to discuss this topic with your Global Healthcare Simulation peers!


Communication issues remain a top cause of poor patient outcomes and harm in all aspects of healthcare. Clinical simulation is an ideal space for healthcare staff to acquire and improve both their communication and teamwork skills. Due to a multitude of factors in clinical care such as hierarchy and a lack of psychological safety, there are many challenges for staff of all levels to communicate effectively and speak up.

Healthcare simulation is an ideal space for clinical staff to be able to practice speaking challenging statements out loud and to receive safe feedback to encourage more of such behaviors. These communication skills are able to be applied in other environments external to clinical simulation and even clinical care such as in difficult conversations and self advocacy for staff.Reflection of clinical practice without shame and blame is important for clinical staff to be able to accelerate learning and therefore improve clinical care and outcomes.

Self compassion is a powerful tool to teach healthcare professionals how to be kind to themselves and also others. The coin termed by Kristen Neff encourages self kindness rather than self criticism, common humanity and also mindfulness. Such tools can be woven into clinical simulation debrief and encourage clinical staff to apply such skills in other environments such as in the care for self, patients and colleagues.

Boundaries are important for everyone in order to care for themselves and to not push themselves to the point of burnout. In particular, junior staff can struggle to say no to requests beyond their capacity and to care for themselves. Mindfulness skills can be shared and also encouraged within clinical simulation based education environments. These may include breathing exercises to overcome physical overwhelm for example.

Concepts such as team based care can also be encouraged in healthcare simulation in order to assist with both the identification and potential reduction in clinical staff burnout rates. Emphasis on points in debrief such as when a team member has been facing challenges through identification points such as their body language, enquiring questions or sharing of information can encourage team members to help each other out when facing challenges and role models such care of one another. Clinical simulation is the ideal space to normalize mistakes in the human experience, reduce shame and encourage vulnerability.

This article has explored the concept that healthcare simulation is one potential area to assist to combat the global issue of healthcare staff burnout. Clinical simulation is often described as a bright and hopeful space for participants and healthcare simulation staff are highly trained and effective in the management of difficult conversations and exploration of organizational challenges. Healthcare simulation faculty have a number of skills that can potentially assist with wellbeing improvement for healthcare staff of all professions.

How to Build Resilience into Your Clinical Simulation Program

Erin Carn-Bennett Avatar
MSN, RN
Simulation Nurse Educator
Erin Carn-Bennett is a Simulation Nurse Educator for the Douglas Starship Simulation Programme in Auckland, New Zealand. Carn-Bennett has her Masters of Nursing and has an extensive nursing career within pediatric emergency and also nursing management. She is passionate about debriefing and all things simulation. Carn-Bennett is a member of the IPSS board of directors. Carn-Bennett is the lead host of the podcast Sim Nurse NZ.