Upcoming Events at CMS, Cambridge, MA

• 09/22/2010 Labor and Delivery Course (L&D CRM-1)
• 09/24/2010 Crisis Management Training for Practicing Anesthesiologists -held at CMS Cambridge, MA. This workshop is specifically designed to meets the American Board of Anesthesiology’s MOCA Simulation Requirement
• 09/28/2010 Anesthesia Crisis Management Training (ACRM-2)
• 09/29/2010 Labor and Delivery Course (L&D CRM-3)
• 10/01/2010 RMF Surgery Teamwork Workshop
• 10/04/2010-10/09/2010 Comprehensive Simulation Instructor Course
• 10/12/2010 Boston Simulation Community Research and Education Meeting

CMS’ Institute for Medical Simulation held a 5 1/2 day Simulation Instructor Workshop last week at its offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Attending the course were twenty physicians, nurses and educators from around the world including countries as far away as China and Australia.

Established in 2004 and updated through the years, the Comprehensive Instructor Workshop in Medical Simulation is the Institute’s most comprehensive and immersive program. Attendees represent a wide range of experience, disciplines and specialties, but all share one common goal: to become outstanding educational leaders or directors of a current or prospective simulation program. With experiential education being the keystone of simulation, the course is a mix of theory, practice and feedback so that students develop a strong and comprehensive understanding of how to most effectively use simulation within their education programs. Widely respected, dedicated educators with years of simulation experience lead the course with one main goal in mind: Transform every IMS student to be an outstanding educator.

For this workshop, a new half-day module, led by Sharon Muret-Wagstaff PhD, MPA, was added that positions clinical simulation leaders to understand the steps needed to choose, use, or create an assessment instrument. The new curriculum features three case studies of clinicians using assessment to enhance learning in their institutions. One case highlights the challenges clinicians face in choosing the right assessment instrument to assess learning outcomes in PALS courses. Another case outlines how clinicians can use already-validated teamwork instruments to assess the efficacy of simulation based teamwork courses. And, the third case illustrates how assessment can be important at the level of the overall simulation program by helping simulation center leaders think through how to assess the success for their center as a whole.

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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 Jeff Cooper, Executive Director of CMS. was recently interviewed  for the  ANZCA Bulletin (Austalian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists). The first installment of  the interview entitled, ”A Life in Patient Safety: A conversation with Professor Jeff Cooper”, appeared in the June 2010 edition of the Bulletin. In this part, Dr. Cooper discusses his background and how he became involved in patient safety.  In the second part, which will appear in the September edition,  Dr. Cooper talks about the achievements in patient safety made so far, and outlines his thoughts on the work that still needs to be done. The interview was conducted by Dr Cate McIntosh, Director of Simulation at the Hunter New England Skills and Simulation Centre, and Consultant Anaesthetist in the Department of Anaesthesia, Intensive Care and Pain Medicine at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle Australia.

The first installment of the interview appears below:

I recently attended the annual meeting of the Accredited Educational Institutes of the American College of Surgeons (March 12 & 13). A few highlights:

Watch for a publication that should appear soon in Pediatric and Critical Care Medicine describing a study that demonstrates the effectiveness of simulation in improving the outcome of pediatric codes. Well-designed and real outcomes.

The keynote was by the CEO of a company that does the animation for Hollywood movies. He showed how “Benjamin Button” was made. The Brad Pitt character was said to be 90% digital. It’s not a big leap to imagine how we aren’t far from having the tools (more…)