Here at CMS we have our own version of the popular PBS show, “Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?”  Our’s features longtime CMS faculty member Dan Raemer who we feel puts the popular globe trotting PBS character to shame in his quest to improve patient safety and medical education through the use of simulation.  Since the beginning of this year Dan has been to New York to help teach an IMS Instructor Course; New Orleans for the IMSH Meeting where he helped teach several workshops and then on to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane Australia and Hong Kong, China to help teach more CMS’ Simulation Instructor Courses.  After coming back to the States for a short visit and change of clothes Dan headed back to Australia last month. While there he spent he spent five days at the Royal Melbourne Hospital giving a series of talks and workshops on teamwork, crisis management and speaking up to medical students and other healthcare professionals.  He followed this up with a week long visiting professorship at the John Hunter Hospital in New Castle, Australia where he did workshops for the innovation and simulation departments on improvisiation, evaluation and strategy.  Later this week Dan is flying to California where he’ll be giving the key note lecture at a the 1st Annual Loma Linda University Simulation Center Regional Simulation Conference.  Two weeks later Dan will be travelling to back to Hong Kong to give the the keynote address at the Asia-Pacific Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (APMSH).  In early June, Dan is heading to Granada Spain for the 17th Annual Meeting of the Society in Europe for Simulation Applied To Medicine (SESAM) where he’ll be leading a workshop on CMS’ Debriefing Assessment for Simulation in Healthcare (DASH).   Right after SESAM, Dan will travel to Santander Spain where he’ll help teach CMS’ IMS/Europe Institute for Medical Simulation Instructor Course at the Hospital Virtual Valdecilla. Then it’s back to the States where Dan will be conducting a pre-conference workshop on Methods for Assessing Teamwork in Simulation at the 10th annual International Nursing Simulation/Learning Resource Centers Conference (INACSL) in Orlando, Florida.

Jeff Cooper has written an editorial entitled, “Using Simulation To Teach and Study Healthcare Handoffs” for the August 2010 edition of Simulation in Healthcare. As Jeff notes in his editorial, Patient Handoffs, also called handovers or shiftchanges, are considered one of the most critical issues in patient safety. Read about Jeff’s thoughts on using simulation to raise awareness and hopefully help reduce the risk of handoffs.

Both Jeff and Dan Raemer are in Australia this week at the SimTecT Health 2010 conference. SimTect Health is the annual conference for the Australian Society for Simulation in Healthcare. Monday evening Jeff and Dan hosted a reception for Institute for Medical Simulation graduates. And, both are speakers at plenary sessions, round tables and workshops.

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