Medical simulation technology: educational overview, industry leaders, and what's missing

Implementing the Debriefing Assessment for Simulation in Healthcare (DASH) Tool for Training Medical Faculty

Introduction Despite simulation being widely recognized as an essential component of medical education, there remains a dearth of literature on its implementation and effectiveness in pre-clerkship medical education. In order to effectively encompass healthcare simulations within medical instruction, it is imperative to first address the often neglected gap in faculty development and training. With this in mind, we aim to present our experience in implementing the Debriefing Assessment for Simulation in Healthcare (DASH) tool in training faculty at Nova Southeastern University Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Allopathic Medicine, Fort Lauderdale, USA. Methods Twenty participating faculty practiced instructing a simulation session and completed the DASH tool. Quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to report the findings. Results The Survey Rater and Student DASH version results were analyzed using the Mann-Whitney U test to see if there was a difference between the two groups for each question. Conclusions All faculty participating in healthcare simulations should be trained in order to deliver a structured debriefing experience. In healthcare medical simulation, the identification of faculty training is imperative to address many of the challenges of healthcare today, including patient safety issues and limitations of medical training in hospital settings. Implications The study aims to serve as a template that researchers can use in identifying potential faculty training development, as the benefits of having faculty trained in simulation methodology are successful in higher educational settings. Further studies in simulation-based education faculty training are recommended.

Online Simulation Education for Audiometry Training

PURPOSE

The purpose of this clinical focus article was to describe a new online simulation program for pure-tone audiometry.

METHOD

Fictional but realistic patient profiles and testing environments were created to teach students about hearing screening protocols and pure-tone audiology. The diversity of the demographics of the United States is represented throughout the program. The web app was created using HTML/JS/CSS with a Flask server backend and MySQL database.

RESULTS

The program allows students to learn the process of conducting a hearing screening and measuring audiometric thresholds using a web-based virtual clinical audiometer. The virtual audiometer includes standard audiometer features and allows for instruction based on standard guidelines. The diversity of the patients within the simulation program allows for discussions of diversity to be woven throughout the curriculum.

CONCLUSIONS

The new simulation program is designed for use as a clinical training tool enabling undergraduate and graduate students to actively participate in hearing screening testing and pure-tone audiometry using any web browser. The program is also designed with the intent to improve pedagogical outcomes at the undergraduate and graduate level for communication sciences and disorders education for pure-tone audiometry by providing instructors with content that focuses on the diversity that is represented in the demographics of the United States.

Perspectives on simulation-based training from paediatric healthcare providers in Nigeria: a national survey

OBJECTIVES

The objective of this study was to explore the access to, and perceived utility of, various simulation modalities by in-service healthcare providers in a resource-scarce setting.

SETTING

Paediatric training workshops at a national paediatric conference in Nigeria.

PARTICIPANTS

All 200 healthcare workers who attended the workshop sessions were eligible to participate. A total of 161 surveys were completed (response rate 81%).

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES

A paper-based 25-item cross-sectional survey on simulation-based training (SBT) was administered to a convenience sample of healthcare workers from secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities.

RESULTS

Respondents were mostly 31-40 years of age (79, 49%) and women (127, 79%). Consultant physicians (26, 16%) and nurses (56, 35%) were in both general (98, 61%) and subspecialty (56, 35%) practice. Most had 5-10 years of experience (62, 37%) in a tertiary care setting (72, 43%). Exposure to SBT varied by profession with physicians more likely to be exposed to manikin-based (29, 30% physicians vs 12, 19% nurses, p<0.001) or online training (7, 7% physician vs 3, 5% nurses, p<0.05). Despite perceived barriers to SBT, respondents thought that SBT should be expanded for continuing education (84, 88% physician vs 39, 63% nurses, p<0.001), teaching (73, 76% physicians vs 16, 26% nurses, p<0.001) and research (65, 68% physicians vs 14, 23% nurses, p<0.001). If facilities were available, nearly all respondents (92, 98% physicians; 52, 96% nurses) would recommend the use of online simulation for their centre.

CONCLUSIONS

The access of healthcare workers to SBT is limited in resource-scarce settings. While acknowledging the challenges, respondents identified many areas in which SBT may be useful, including skills acquisition, skills practice and communication training. Healthcare workers were open to the use of online SBT and expressed the need to expand SBT beyond the current scope for health professional training in Nigeria.