Organising your Simulation Centre
From WickedSim
There are many important components in setting up and organising your centre. A list of highlights might include:
- Speak to everyone in your setting who is interested in simulation. People come first, before buildings, fancy models, and financing. The biggest failing in setting up a simulation centre is to not engage all the interested parties --- you get left with expensive and underutilised manikins, and resentment.
- Define a set of reasonable goals, tasks and priorities that are person-centred.
- Just do it! (With fire in the belly; don't wait for perfection).
Contents |
Govenance Models
A few thoughts from Richard Kyle (SSH discussion list, 31 March 2007)
- The best purpose to expend someone else's wealth on clinical simulation is for education. Therefore use a governance model that already works best in your culture for basic educational goals.
- The best people to include in any clinical simulation program are those that see themselves as teachers first, their specific domain of expertise second. Therefore use a governance model that already works best in your culture for educator's goals.
- The best simulation programs are not not monocultures. but include a number of different clinical disciplines and tribes and integrate a much wider range of expertise beyond just Dr x, RN y, Sim Tech z. Therefore use a governance model that already works best in your culture for the broadest of educational goals.
- The best simulation programs have full-time dedicated Simulation Professionals, whose job it is is to provide the clinical educators and their students as content centered sim experiences as possible, not requiring self-selected clinical educators to become sim experts, too - Think: what do professional clinical librarians bring to clinical your library? and how would your library experience be compromised without them? Therefore use a governance model that already works best in your culture for your clinical library.
Software
Scheduling and report-generating software
The following was derived from a recent SSH Mailing list discussion (21 Jun 2007). A list of vendors, in no particular order includes:
- WebSP from Lionis.net "They do everything to schedule, collect data, report, and manage all aspects of a Clinical Skills Center, which of course includes simulation. Their state-of-the-art video book marking and annotation features really do set it apart." (Delia Anderson; MaryKay Smith)
- EMS and
- B-Line (Judy Thornton)
- Gradepointe (Sandy Tobar)
- Cerner Millenium EHR (Douglas Wager; interests disclosed)
- WebEvent (Jesika Gavilanes)
- There's a more comprehensive link at SSIH in the Resources section.
- Here's another useful page from Penn State.
Note that the above doesn't represent an endorsement of the products, and doesn't constitute advertising.
Debriefing software
Many people seem to have the requirements expressed by Chet Dalski in an SSH discussion on 20 Jun 2007:
- Capture video on the fly.
- Electronically tag it for various observed behaviors so that the tags can be used in the debriefing to quickly review actions (play 30 seconds before and after the tag).
- Be able to save the simulation as a file on a file server for later use/review.
- Have something that is painless for the Instructors to use.
- Get something that is affordable.
Possible solutions include StudioCode (needs a Mac but seems to work pretty well), B-Line Medical (feature-packed but pricey), Noldus Observer, ...
David Gaba wisely wrote
Another option is just to use a video editing software and jot down the time code for any comment --- the digital replay allows you to jump immediately to the time-code you've jotted down. This is very cheap but less flexible. We do something like this in Studiocode for those instructors who don't want to press buttons (only 1,2,3,4....etc.).
Hardware
A few miscellaneous notes...
Portable wireless microphones
"I would like to purchase/put together a wireless mic system that I could use in different environments" (Traci Thoureen, SSH discussion April 2007)
Consider the following ideas:
- I also am not terribly techno savvy but what I did is purchase a set of walkie talkies and there is a place,jack, on them you can insert a hearing device. The person puts in in the ear the walkie talkie in the pocket or hands on pants and it works. Also, low tech low cost (Aurelie Chinn)
- Revolabs (Valeriy Kozmenko)
- You should take a look at a wireless IFB setup. IFB systems (usually hard-wired systems) are utilitzed by all tv stations and video crews which allow the directors/producers to talk to the talent or camera operators either all at once or individually. I am sure there is a unit available to fit your needs/budget. If you have ever seen a tv anchor with an earpiece, you have seen an IFB system in action. (Fritz Sticht)
