Interdisciplinary Clinical Skills Simulation Center
University of Oklahoma, Tulsa
R. Saizow, G. Ellison, L. Dunn, L. Alexander

Enhancing skills competence, patient safety and teamwork

 

 

Introduction
Educating health professionals in core clinical skills, such as communication and relationship skills, physical examination and diagnosis, and clinical decision-making, is facing significant challenges.  Among these challenges are:
 
•  Patient safety
•  Faculty teaching time
•  Shift toward competency-based assessments
•  Decline in clinical skills proficiency of medical graduates
•  Call by IOM and others to enhance collaboration among healthcare professionals
•  Recredentialing requirements and new skills competence for
practicing medical professionals
 
In health sciences education over the past two decades, simulation-based instruction has been recognized as:
 
•  A powerful tool in addressing patient safety and quality-care training.
•  An intensive, reproducible, flexible, standardized training
opportunity for individuals and teams that is focused on practical experience and learning from mistakes without compromising patient safety.
•  A strategy for learners to reliably experience unusual presentations of common illnesses and rare diseases in a time frame that best suits their needs.
•  A complementary program with the traditional training methods employing live patients, but where the risks to patient safety are eliminated by supporting development of clinical proficiency prior to patient contact.
 
At the OU-Tulsa Schusterman Center, where the health sciences colleges reside within close proximity (literally just down a hallway or two), there exists a growing commitment to creating interdisciplinary learning opportunities.

 

Project Objectives

To address these challenges, the health science colleges of the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa plan to create an Interdisciplinary Clinical Skills Simulation Center (ICSSC).
 
This project aims to:
 
•  Establish a multidisciplinary broad based advisory committee to
   advise ICSSC development
•  Implement a leadership structure empowered and supported by OU, Tulsa and community
•  Build the strategic plan for the development of the ICSSC

 

Vision Statement
The OU-Tulsa health sciences colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and allied health and their community partners will create a state-of-the-art technology-enhanced learning environment in which students, faculty, and community partners can gain and enhance clinical skills, including diagnostic reasoning, physical examination and diagnosis, communication skills and professionalism, and interdisciplinary collaboration, with a mandate to increase patient safety through improved clinical proficiency and teamwork.
 

Description of Project

As community based programs, the health education colleges of OU-Tulsa have strong affiliations with Tulsa’s three primary hospitals as well as numerous ambulatory and residential centers across northeastern Oklahoma, thus requiring distance education capabilities.  The students in the colleges of medicine, nursing, pharmacy and allied health, as well as residents in the graduate medical programs and practitioners in affiliated institutions, will be the primary participants of the ICSSC. 
 
The scope of simulations envisioned for the ICSSC includes:
 
•  Standardized Patients
•  Human Patient Simulators
•  Task Trainers
•  Computer-based and web-based instruction
•  Virtual Reality Trainers (VRT) and Haptic Systems 
•  Simulated Environments for teamwork training
•
Anticipated staffing requirements:
 
•  Program Director who will have oversight, planning, and budgetary responsibility
•  Coordinator who will manage the day to day operations
•  Educator who will train the Standardized Patients and support curriculum integration with the colleges, departments, and community
•  Technology and staff support

 

Progress to Date

•  Formation of executive committee, biweekly meetings since Feb 1, 2005
•  Submission of FY06 Federal Appropriations request for $3,000,000.
•  Recruitment of advisory committee, first meeting held Mar 18, 2005
o  Revision and approval of Justification and Goals Statement
o  Review of established simulation programs to guide selection of site visits
o  Exploration of site visit locations
o  Draft of project management tasks and timeline

Next Steps

•  Funding considerations
o  Legislative proposal
o  Others: Reynolds?, local philanthropy
•  Location options for ICSSC
o  New Clinic/Research/Cancer Center building
o  Vacated clinics bldg
o  Other sites
•Organizational considerations
o  Needs assessment and community education
§  Site visits
o  Policies and procedures
o  Staffing requirements
 

Questions

1. What pitfalls should we be aware of as we plan for the implementation of this interdisciplinary simulation center?
 
2. What do we need to be doing now to educate and  prepare the faculty of the different colleges for this different level of sophisticated technology than in current use?
 

Clinical Skills Simulation in Health Science Education

A Selected Bibliography

Adamo G.  Simulated and standardized patients in OSCEs: achievements and challenges 1992-2003. Med Teach. 2003 May;25(3):262-70.
Bradley P, Postlethwaite K.  Setting up a clinical skills learning facility. Med Educ. 2003 Nov;37 Suppl 1:6-13.
Executive Summary: Health Professions Education: a bridge to quality. Institute of Medicine, 2003.
Gaba DM. The future vision of simulation in health care. Qual Saf Health Care 2004;13(Suppl 1):i2-i10.
Maran NJ, Glavin RJ.  Low- to high-fidelity simulation - a continuum of medical education? MedEduc. 2003 Nov;37 Suppl 1:1-5.
Wolpaw, T. Clinical Skills and Simulation Center for the Health Professions. Personal correspondence, 2005.
Ziv A, Wolpe PR, Small SD, Glick S. Simulation based medical education: an ethical imperative. Acad Med. 2003 Aug;78(8):783-8
 

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