Simulation in healthcare : journal of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare
-
Existing attitude scales on interprofessional education (IPE) focus on students' attitudes toward the concepts of teamwork and opportunities for IPE but fail to examine student perceptions of the learning modality that also plays an important role in the teaching and learning process. The purpose of this present study was to test the psychometric characteristics of the KidSIM Attitude Towards Teamwork in Training Undergoing Designed Educational Simulation (ATTITUDES) questionnaire developed to measure student perceptions of and attitudes toward IPE, teamwork, and simulation as a learning modality. ⋯ The KidSIM ATTITUDES questionnaire provides a reliable and construct valid measure of student perceptions of and attitudes toward IPE, teamwork, and simulation as a learning modality.
-
The primary goal of this investigation was to develop a simulation model to evaluate the various internal and external factors affecting patient flow and crowding in the emergency department (ED). In addition, a few recommendations are proposed to reconfigure the patient flow to improve ED capacity while maintaining service quality. ⋯ Real-world systems are often too intricate for analytical models and often too expensive to trial with directly. Simulation models allow the modeling of this intricacy and enable experimentation to make inferences about how the actual system might perform. Our simulation study modeled that diverting the specific patient load to ED-LRA produced an improvement in overall ED's LOS and WT.
-
In September 2011, the Association of American Medical Colleges released the results of a survey conducted in 2010 on simulation activities at its member medical schools and teaching hospitals. In this commentary, we offer a synthesis of data and conclude that (1) simulation is used broadly at Association of American Medical Colleges member institutions, for many types of learners, including other health care professionals; (2) it addresses core training competencies and has many educational purposes; (3) its use in learner assessment is more prevalent at medical schools but is still significant at teaching hospitals; and (4) it requires a considerable investment of money, space, personnel, and time. These data confirm general perceptions about the state of simulation in North America for physician training. Future endeavors should include a more granular examination of how simulation is integrated into curricula, a similar survey of other health care-related institutions and professions, and a periodic assessment to characterize trends over time.
-
Evaluation of simulation-based training model on vascular anastomotic skills for surgical residents.
Reduced work hours and concerns over patient safety have encouraged surgical educators to find methods to advance resident skills more efficiently. Simulation provides the opportunity to improve technical surgical skills outside the operating room. We hypothesized that practice on surgical task simulators would improve residents' technical performance of vascular anastomotic technique. ⋯ We conclude that practice using simulated anastomotic models leads to measurable improvement in vascular anastomotic technique in senior general surgery residents.