Presentation
Learning from others: Scaling interprofessional simulation learning experiences to include all health professions learners.
DescriptionExperiential learning in the clinical environment is a critical component of health professional training. Some experiences such as working with a person with intellectual and developmental disability or experiencing a patient death may not happen at all for some health profession’s students and likely not often enough to any student to achieve comfort and competence in managing individual responses or their response as a member of the health care team. Students going through these experiences have limited opportunity to process and learn from the experience and may experience trauma because of feeling unprepared or shamed by their responses. Simulation offers a safe and effective environment for students to process their personal responses, to learn about how other team members have responded and to learn behaviors that can support the team’s ability to recover from the experience and prepare to respond more effectively in a subsequent encounter.
At UIC, simulation has been used to provide interprofessional teams of students the opportunity to experience emotionally and psychologically challenging situations. In one experience, “First Death” students participate in a simulation during which a young adult patient comes to the emergency department and subsequently dies. In a second experience, students participate in a simulation of a clinic encounter with a young adult with intellectual disabilities and complex medical problems. Both simulation experiences involve an interprofessional team. Participating learners complete these encounters and then participate in reflection on their individual responses to the encounter followed by structured debriefing in which they learn about the responses of other learners and examine the response of the team as a whole. The students’ reactions to these experiences show a positive impact on understanding the value of team based interprofessional care for members of the team. While these experiences have had positive evaluation results, they have proven to be difficult to sustain and to scale to include all health professions learners who could benefit.
Educational simulation is an effective modality for learning interprofessional collaboration skills but access to simulation experiences is not uniform across health professions programs and is even more rarely available to practicing health care teams. The barriers to interprofessional simulation learning experiences include some of the same things that are challenging for any interprofessional education and include scheduling, difference in the value placed on interprofessional education across different health professions education programs and health care systems, and potentially most critical is a lack of shared commitment by education and practice leaders to overcoming these barriers.
There are additional barriers specific to the use of simulation in interprofessional education and team-based training. One of those barriers is the relatively high costs of simulation. Simulation centers are expensive to build and operate, requiring significant investment that comes from multiple funding sources. Health professions programs vary by number of students, lengths of the various programs, tuition paid, and the power to attract capital funding, philanthropic support and bring in grant funding. A second barrier is access. Simulation centers are most often housed within a single college or program at an educational institution (most often medicine and nursing). Very often other professions have access to those simulation resources for interprofessional education under the condition that the simulation experience includes students from the unit that “owns” the simulation center. The result is uneven, or in many cases, there is no access to simulation for students in other programs. It also results in simulation experiences that must be designed to include students from the professions whose college owns the unit even when that might not be most realistic to the simulation experience. A final additional barrier is the need for simulationists who have the expertise needed to design interprofessional simulation experiences.
A potential solution to these barriers is to develop a shared resource model governed by an interprofessional team that is situated within a unit that can serve as a neutral convener. A central unit that can provide financial support and provide consultation on the development of interprofessional simulation learning experience would be able to advise on the creation of learning experiences that includes learners from health professions programs who might otherwise not be included.
Success in garnering support for a centralized unit requires a well-designed evaluation plan that addresses resource, process and outcome measures across the educational and clinical environment. An information management system that gathers data on the simulation experiences offered, the cost, the participants as well as the learning outcomes and the impact of the simulation on performance of clinical teams can be administered through a central unit.
At UIC, simulation has been used to provide interprofessional teams of students the opportunity to experience emotionally and psychologically challenging situations. In one experience, “First Death” students participate in a simulation during which a young adult patient comes to the emergency department and subsequently dies. In a second experience, students participate in a simulation of a clinic encounter with a young adult with intellectual disabilities and complex medical problems. Both simulation experiences involve an interprofessional team. Participating learners complete these encounters and then participate in reflection on their individual responses to the encounter followed by structured debriefing in which they learn about the responses of other learners and examine the response of the team as a whole. The students’ reactions to these experiences show a positive impact on understanding the value of team based interprofessional care for members of the team. While these experiences have had positive evaluation results, they have proven to be difficult to sustain and to scale to include all health professions learners who could benefit.
Educational simulation is an effective modality for learning interprofessional collaboration skills but access to simulation experiences is not uniform across health professions programs and is even more rarely available to practicing health care teams. The barriers to interprofessional simulation learning experiences include some of the same things that are challenging for any interprofessional education and include scheduling, difference in the value placed on interprofessional education across different health professions education programs and health care systems, and potentially most critical is a lack of shared commitment by education and practice leaders to overcoming these barriers.
There are additional barriers specific to the use of simulation in interprofessional education and team-based training. One of those barriers is the relatively high costs of simulation. Simulation centers are expensive to build and operate, requiring significant investment that comes from multiple funding sources. Health professions programs vary by number of students, lengths of the various programs, tuition paid, and the power to attract capital funding, philanthropic support and bring in grant funding. A second barrier is access. Simulation centers are most often housed within a single college or program at an educational institution (most often medicine and nursing). Very often other professions have access to those simulation resources for interprofessional education under the condition that the simulation experience includes students from the unit that “owns” the simulation center. The result is uneven, or in many cases, there is no access to simulation for students in other programs. It also results in simulation experiences that must be designed to include students from the professions whose college owns the unit even when that might not be most realistic to the simulation experience. A final additional barrier is the need for simulationists who have the expertise needed to design interprofessional simulation experiences.
A potential solution to these barriers is to develop a shared resource model governed by an interprofessional team that is situated within a unit that can serve as a neutral convener. A central unit that can provide financial support and provide consultation on the development of interprofessional simulation learning experience would be able to advise on the creation of learning experiences that includes learners from health professions programs who might otherwise not be included.
Success in garnering support for a centralized unit requires a well-designed evaluation plan that addresses resource, process and outcome measures across the educational and clinical environment. An information management system that gathers data on the simulation experiences offered, the cost, the participants as well as the learning outcomes and the impact of the simulation on performance of clinical teams can be administered through a central unit.
Event Type
Oral Presentations
TimeTuesday, March 261:52pm - 2:15pm CDT
LocationSalon A-4
Simulation and Education