Developing A Successful Clinical Training Program With Medical Simulation

For decades, simulation has been a training mainstay in the aeronautical and military fields for its ability to safely prepare learners to effectively handle themselves during real life, high stakes situations. Pilots-in-training clock flight time, heighten alertness, and learn how to react in an emergency. And soldiers learn strike positions and tactical boundaries before their boots hit the battlefield. Seeing this success, maniac academic medical and healthcare institutions have turned to medical simulation to develop advanced skills in their clinical learners. With simulation, learners enhance their communication skills, ability to work with other care practitioners, advanced decision making and diagnosis competencies, and more.

The accompanying simulation training center may occupy one room; several rooms (including a control center); a multi-room hospital ward; or even a multi-floor space which includes clinical environments as diverse as an OBGYN ward, an emergency room, a family health room, a surgical suite, and a pharmacy. In other words, the center can be built to exactly meet the institution's needs and requirements.Then, to specifically cultivate the clinical learners' patient care techniques, an in-house medical simulation training program will be established.

And in order to do this, the institution should first and fore most determine the scope of its medical simulation training requirements: what skills can be targeted to positively impact clinical treatment, and what simulation technology will be best suited for the environment?

A robust medical simulation training program might also include a robust array of educational equipment.

At the backbone of any simulation center is a medical simulation software platform. Medical simulation software makes it possible for administrators to capture, organize, and analyze the complete spectrum of their center's data, including information relating the usage of permanent and disposable equipment; personnel and learner scheduling; booking of rooms and equipment--or essentially anything needed to ensure smooth simulation center operations.

Medical simulation software also allows faculty members to share pre-simulation information with learners, especially documents and images related to the session they've been scheduled to take part in. It also makes it easier to track learning outcome trends for individual learners; learner groups or classes; and between courses, semesters, and even campuses. If a faculty member examines the medical simulation data and recognizes that a concept isn't "hitting home" with learners, they may be prompted to provide further instruction or make an adjustment to the curriculum.

Learners too benefit from having access to a simulation center equipped with the latest medical simulation software and technology. When a medical simulation center is enhanced with audio-video technology, learners can view recordings immediately following the simulation. This is known as the "debriefing" session. Learners can pinpoint where they excel and where there may be room for improvement--and be confident that their skills are being developed in a safe environment. Whether they take part in standardized patient (SP)/actor or human patient simulator (mannequin) training, they're free to make and learn from their mistakes without ever putting a real patient at risk.

With the collected medical simulation data, learners are also able to create and maintain a portfolio containing documents and videos highlighting their clinical successes. The job market is competitive, even within the high-grown healthcare environment. With a portfolio that demonstrates proven skill, a learner may have a better shot at landing the best clinical position available.

To encourage positive learning outcomes, a clinical training program must make sure that medical simulation is fully integrated into the overall curriculum. Learners should be in centivized to work with the simulators: training outcomes show progress over time, can be tracked for mandatory skill mastery and course completion, and may even help establish an essential competitive spirit between users. Simulation sessions scheduled for every clinical learner on a daily, weekly, or biweekly basis encourage skill retention and ensure regular assessment.

Medical simulation is also a key to skill standardization in a clinical training program. Every learner completes the same simulation scenarios for consistent yet potentially diverse skill development. This allows instructors to make fair assessments of whether their clinical learners have consistent reasoning abilities, diagnosis techniques, and communication skills.

As medical simulation training programs become more common worldwide,so too will there be more research and best practices available over time. Program administrators discuss what's worked, what hasn't, and go on to develop new medical simulation practices for more advanced and efficient skill development. Ultimately, this is a boon for patients: better trained clinicians lead to better care outcomes and faster recovery times.

Learn more about how medical simulation software can optimize your medical simulation training program at:

www.SIMULATIONiQ.com.

About The Author:

The author of the article has extensive experience in the field of Medical Simulation Software and Nursing Simulation Training.