Simulation, in simple terms, involves artificially recreating real events and processes in controlled conditions. It has opened a new avenue of teaching critical medical practices while giving the space to students to safely make mistakes.
Simulation recreates a real-time experience to attain educational objectives through experiential hands-on learning. This is helping in reducing the dependence on traditional bedside learning from patients.
Concerns of patient safety, growing patient awareness and litigation, busier hospitals, shortage of resources, bigger training groups, and lack of hands-on learning opportunities have all been compelling reasons to look for better alternatives to bedside learning. The pandemic has also forced us to reduce dependence on real patients to pick up skills.
Historically, teaching and trial of new techniques happened directly on real patients. Today, recreating scenarios in a simulated environment offers an opportunity for students and clinicians to acquire, adjust, and master expertise in the field until the desired outcome is achieved. Recreation of real-life patient experiences in a simulated environment is now offering a great alternative to conventional methodologies. The solutions in simulation training start with simple skill training models and go up to super speciality simulators.
Learning the skills on a training model bridges the gap between theory and practice before a student is confident and ready to perform on a patient. These training models offer the liberty of repeated practice and assessment in a safe and effective manner.
Simulation brings alive the knowledge acquired from books and lectures before experiencing it with a real patient.
Technological advancement has broadened the training possibilities of simulation in super speciality courses like arthroscopy, endovascular surgery, urology, gynaecology, robotic surgery, endoscopy, ultrasonography and many more.
The order and complexity of clinical procedures are often presented to the trainee in a random manner, which gives suboptimal and inefficient learning opportunities. Virtual reality offers potential for training, assessment, and rehearsal of such procedures outside the operating room in a safe environment.
Procedures can either be simulated, using cases on the simulator, or by using real anatomy derived from imaging methods such as computed tomography angiography (CTA) or magnetic resonance angiography(MRA). Such training will now play a very crucial role in education settings and in certifications. Similarly, professionals can now be trained on a simulator on the various complications they may encounter in an intensive care unit (ICU) or operation theatre.
This is changing the way healthcare is taught and how students and professionals acquire and enhance their skill. Learning on simulators or in a simulated environment also offers an opportunity to enhance decision making, communication, leadership and teamwork. It also helps in addressing a key challenge of medical errors causing harm to real patients because of various factors during the caregiving process.
Simulation centres, equipped with these training models and simulators, offer a real hospital-like atmosphere. They provide an opportunity to experience rare situations that students may not encounter during the tenure of their programme. The centres also provide multidisciplinary team training, which is a rarity in the conventional healthcare curriculum. This addresses the challenges of healthcare providers from different disciplines working as a team.
Professionals and students in medical, dental, nursing and allied science programmes are all going to benefit through this simulation experience. The growing acceptance of simulation in healthcare is now driving the incorporation of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and virtual reality into the field. This will help to provide the trainees with the most lifelike simulation products and solutions.
Simulation-based training has become an indispensable component of healthcare education, offering a safe and effective way to train and assess healthcare professionals across various disciplines. The emphasis on practical skills, patient safety, and multidisciplinary collaboration positions simulation as a cornerstone in modern healthcare education.
(The author is Vice-Chancellor, The Tamilnadu Dr MGR Medical University)
pushkala.s@tnmgrmu.ac.in
