Simulation Is Changing The Way That Healthcare Professionals Learn And Improve Patient Safety

Healthcare Simulation Week September 16-20, 2019

News provided by

Society for Simulation in Healthcare

Sep 16, 2019, 14:29 ET

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Healthcare simulation is rapidly changing the face of healthcare. Simulation is a technique that creates a situation or environment allowing people to experience a representation of a real event for the purpose of experiential practice, learning, testing, evaluation and understanding of systems. Healthcare Simulation Week will be held September 16-20, 2019.

Healthcare Simulation Week, sponsored by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, SSH, celebrates professionals who use simulation to improve the quality of healthcare. Simulation is a rapidly evolving field in which an increasing number of healthcare professionals are finding fulfilling, lifelong careers.

Using simulation, learners address critical skills including procedures, dynamic decision-making, and communication. Essential teamwork behaviors such as managing high workload and coordinating under stress are practiced. Simulation-based training encompasses a broad range of experiences, including the use of task trainers, mannequins and virtual reality for technical procedures that range from suturing to delivering babies. It also includes standardized patients (role-players) who act as patients and fully staged scenarios that prepare providers for catastrophic events such as natural disasters or mass shootings.

Beyond teaching skills for individual learners, simulation provides insight into the performance and effectiveness of processes and systems critical to patient safety and patient care. Improving the care sequence within a hospital, for instance, requires an accurate model of the care process simulated against numerous "what if" conditions. The insights learned help a hospital to properly plan for and manage both normal and abnormal conditions – all which result in better care for patients.

Healthcare Simulation Week will be celebrated throughout the week with a variety of activities: