The monthly Boston Simulation Community Research and Education meeting will be held this evening Tuesday, May 8th from 5:30-7pm at the Center for Medical Simulation at 65 Landsdowne Street, Cambridge MA.  Light snacks will be served.  These meetings provide a friendly and informal venue for simulation educators and researchers to present work-in-progress, acquaint each other with relevant ideas from other disciplines and connect with others. The meetings are held on the 2nd Tuesday of each month. Everyone with an interest in Simulation is welcome to attend – please feel free join us! 

Tonight, Jenny Rudolph, PhD, of the Center for Medical Simulation in Cambridge, MA (CMS) will be presenting: Taking (some of) the guesswork out of debriefing: preparing faculty for a successful debriefing.   This will be an interactive session that will let participants plan for new debriefings or refine old ones using a simple analytic approach.  The approach is designed to help the debriefer clarify objectives, avoid problems, and identify fruitful approaches when debriefing a scenario.  Dr. Rudolph presented a draft of this approach 18 months ago and CMS faculty have been working to refine it since then.  She believes it to be a very useful approach and will be looking for feedback on how to improve the process.  Attendees are encouraged to come with a scenario that they would like to work on.

Upcoming meeting of the Boston Simulation Community Research and Education Meeting:

June: Work in progress—Helping Learners Manage Anxiety in Simulation: Ann Mullen, Newton Wellesley Hospital

If there is a work in progress or other project you would like to present on the Committee’s fall schedule, please contact Dr. Rudolph at jwrudolph@partners.org.

Join the Center for Medical Simulation and the New York Health and Hospitals Corporation for a live Twitterview on Monday, April 23, 2012 from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. to discuss the importance of Healthcare Simulation

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) and the Center for Medical Simulation will participate in a live Twitterview (interview on Twitter) to discuss the growing importance of healthcare simulation and its applications. Katie Walker, Director of HHC’s Institute for Medical Simulation and Advanced Learning (IMSAL) and Dr. Jeffrey Cooper, Executive Director at the Center for Medical Simulation (CMS) will share information on healthcare reform and the role that medical simulation plays as well as the instructor training course taught by faculty from the Center for Medical Simulation that will be hosted at IMSAL next week, April 24-27. Katie Walker and Dr. Cooper will also be available for questions. People interested in following the discussion can follow the handles @HHCnyc or @MedSimulation and #medsim.

Who:           IMSAL’s Director, Katie Walker and
CMS Executive Director Dr. Jeffrey Cooper

When: Monday, April 23, 2012, 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

Where: Twitter, handles @HHCnyc and @MedSimulation, #medsim

The Center for Medical Simulation and the Hospital Virtual Valdecilla will be presenting the IMS Simulation Instructor Workshop, “Simulation as a Teaching Tool” at HvV in Santander, Spain twice this coming June. One workshop will be held in English and the other in English and Spanish.

This intensive 4 day IMS/Europe Simulation Instructor Training and Debriefing workshop taught by Harvard and Virtual Valdecilla Faculty is specifically designed for those educators seeking to create high quality healthcare simulation programs. It covers high level elements and concepts involved in using simulation as a teaching tool. 

Drawing on the disciplines of aviation, healthcare, psychology, experiential learning, and organizational behavior, participants learn how to teach clinical, behavioral, and cognitive skills through simulation. Participants explore simulator based teaching methods applicable across the healthcare education spectrum, including undergraduate and graduate medical, nursing and allied health domains.

The daily formats vary and include simulation scenarios, lectures, small and large group discussions, and practical exercises with feedback. Ample opportunities are provided for networking and sharing experiences. Attendees join a growing community of Institute graduates who are positioned as leaders in the field.

Workshop Dates:
June 18-21   Conducted in English
June 26-29  Conducted in English and Spanish

For more information, and to register, contact:
Helena Anguren at hanguren@hvvaldecilla.es 

Click here for the IMS Europe/HvV Workshop brochure.

Boston Simulation Community Research and Education Meeting
March 13th, Tuesday from 5:30-7:00 pm
Center for Medical Simulation
65 Landsdowne Street, Cambridge, MA, 1st Floor

Michaela Kolbe, PhD, Senior Research Associate and Lecturer
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland
Department of Management, Technology, and Economics
Organization, Work, Technology Group

Michaela is also Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Medical Simulation through August, 2012

Dr. Kolbe will present: Team Interaction Patterns and Team Performance in Anesthesia.  Dr Kolbe’s work at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology focuses on  rigorous analysis of teamwork patterns in simulation and in the OR using both quantitative and qualitative methods.  In this presentation she will share recent work on the links between team interactions and performance.

For those of you interested in Dr. Kolbe’s work, recent publications include:

Kolbe, M., Burtscher, M.J., Wacker, J., Grande, B., Nohynkova, R., Manser, T., Spahn, D.R., &
Grote, G. Speaking up is related to better team performance in simulated anesthesia
inductions. An observational study. Manuscript provisionally accepted for publication
in Anesthesia and Analgesia.

Kolbe, M. & Grote, G. (2011). Human factors training in aviation and healthcare: What we
know works best and how to put it into practice. In Proceedings of the Human Factors
and Ergonomics Society 55th Annual Meeting (pp. 2105-2108). Santa Monica, CA,
USA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Burtscher, M.J., Kolbe, M., Wacker, J., & Manser, T. (2011). Interactions of team mental
models and monitoring behaviors predict team performance in simulated anesthesia
inductions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 17(3), 257-269, doi:
10.1037/a0025148.

Upcoming meetings of the Boston Simulation Community Research and Education Meeting:
April: Quarterly CIMIT Boston Simulation Consortium
May: Work in progress—Objective-Oriented Debriefing—preparing for debriefing, Jenny Rudolph, Center for Medical Simulation and Catherine Alan, Children’s Hospital Boston
June: Work in progress—Helping Learners Manage Anxiety in Simulation: Ann Mullen, Newton Wellesley Hospital

A look back at the development  of CMS’ Healthcare Adventures^TM (HCA) team-training workshops for healthcare leadership and management teams was featured in a recent  Donaghue Foundation Newsletter.  It was a grant from the Donaghue Foundation in 2007 that led to the development of  the current version of the HCA program. Recently, Donaghue provided a generous supplemental grant to help CMS investigate the prospects of diseminating HCA on a broader regional, and potentially national, basis.

Designed for both clinical and non-clinical healthcare leadership and management teams, HCA is a one-day group workshop that combines customized team challenges with a simulated patient in a highly realistic clinical environment. Yes, non-clinicians actually get the chance to care for a patient and experience real-life issues first hand. It’s an eye-opener! In this highly realistic clinical setting, teams can identify group strengths and capitalize on them; or, identify barriers to effective teamwork and tackle them head on. Applying the learnings collected from training the most dynamic and high-stakes teams of Harvard physicians over the last twelve years, the HCA workshop offers an unrivalled performance-enhancing experiences for any leadership, management or administrative group involved in healthcare.

The Patrick & Catherine Weldon Donaghue Medical Research Foundation was established by Ethel Donaghue in memory of her parents. The Foundation is a charitable testamentary trust dedicated to furthering the search for medical knowledge of practical benefit to human life and to the quality of the lives of people, particularly in Connecticut. The Foundation focuses on initiatives in and for the State to strengthen research on health issues, to promote future research leadership, and to put new knowledge to work for public benefit.

Professor Gudela Grote, PhD, from ETH Zurich will be talking about her group’s work on coordination and leadership in high-risk teams at an informal luncheon meeting at CMS on Wednesday, December 14 starting at noon. 

Gudela Grote, PhD, is a full Professor of Work and Organizational Psychology at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics at ETH Zurich, The main objective of her research is to provide psychologically based concepts and methods for integrative job and organizational design, taking into consideration the changing technological. economic and societal demands and opportunities. Of special interest to Dr. Grote are the increasing flexibility and virtuality of work and their consequences for the individual and organizational management of uncertainty. Application fields for Prof. Grote’s research are teamwork and standardization in high-risk systems, management of the psychological contract, career development, effects of new technologies on work processes, and collaborative planning within an between organizations.

Prof. Grote is associate editor of the journal Safety Science and member of the editorial board of several other journals. She has published widely on topics in Organizational Behavior, Human Factors, Human Resource Management, and safety management. She has worked with companies such as the Swiss Railways, Swiss Re and various public organizations. Together with Prof. Bruno Staffelbach from the University of Zurich she publishes annually the “Schweizer HR-Barometer”.

Boston Simulation Community Research and Education Meeting
CIMIT Boston Simulation Consortium Quarterly Meeting
December 13th, Tuesday from 5:00-7:00 pm
Center for Medical Simulation
65 Landsdowne Street, Cambridge, MA, 1st Floor

This meeting will focus on topics of interest to the greater Boston simulation community such as the upcoming Society for Simulation in Healthcare Annual meeting (IMSH), the development of a collective simulation website calendar for Boston area simulation centers and potential grant opportunities.

The Boston Simulation Community Research and Education Meetings provide a friendly and informal venue for simulation educators and researchers to present work-in-progress, discuss relevant ideas from other disciplines and connect with others with an interest in simulation. The meetings are held on the 2nd Tuesday of each month. Please join us!

Up-coming meetings:

January 10th:
Preparation and preview for International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare, 2012. If you would like to present a work in progress for feedback from the group or give a preview of your completed presentation we welcome your work. Contact  Jenny Rudolph at jwrudolph@partners.org.

February 21:
Emily Hayden, MD, MEd, Gilbert Program in Medical Simulation, Harvard Medical School, Department of Emergency Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital Learning Lab
Measuring Problem Representation Among Preclinical Medical Students Following Mannequin Simulations.
Clinical reasoning is an important skill for medical students to acquire during both their pre-clinical and clinical years. Based on the work on teaching problem representation as a framework for clinical reasoning, the purpose of this project was to develop an instrument capable of detecting differences between students who were trained to use problem representation versus those who were not.

Jeff Cooper, CMS’ Executive Director, was recently honored as a MGH HAVEN ( Helping Abuse and Violence End Now) Domestic Violence Unsung Hero.  Jeff has been an active member of MGH Men Against Abuse for many years. As noted by HAVEN, “His continuing dedication and willingness to get involved in the early days of the men’s effort to raise awareness and end domestic violence is greatly appreciated.” Congratualations to Jeff on receiving this award and for being involved in such a worthwhile group.

The HAVEN Program at MGH was officially launched in January of 1997. Its mission is to work as part of the broader movement to end intimate partner abuse by improving and enhancing our health care response to patients, employees, and community members who have been impacted by abuse. Click here to view Director Elizabeth  Speakman discussing HAVEN at MGH.

Please join us on Tuesday November 8th, Tuesday from 5:30-7:00 PM for the Boston Simulation Community Research and Education Meeting.

Topic:  Simulation Instructor Certification as a Peer-Guided Learning Process

Toni Walzer, MD, Deb Navedo, PhD, CPNP, CNE, Jenny W. Rudolph, PhD, Robert Simon EdD,

Over the past 10 years, the Center for Medical Simulation’s approach to developing and certifying its own instructors has evolved.  This interactive session will discuss the recently revised CMS certification process, which includes peer observation, rating, and feedback on debriefings.  The meeting will provide attendees with the opportunity to observe, rate, and provide feedback on a debriefing, and to discuss the action research project being led by Deb Navedo to understand what faculty learn via this process.

More detail: Both the process of agreeing on instructor certification criteria, and the process of putting them into practice foster debate about what it means to be a competent simulation instructor. With the help of Deb Navedo from the Institute for Health Professions at MGH, CMS has also embarked on an action research project to study how our “Community of Practice” learns from each other about how to improve debriefing skills. 　

Toni Walzer, MD co-directs the Labor and Delivery Teamwork Simulation Program at CMS
Deb Navedo, PhD, CPNP, CNE is the Coordinator of Teaching and Learning Certificate Program, MGH Institute of Health Professions
Jenny W. Rudolph, PhD directs the Graduate Program of the Institute for Medical Simulation
Robert Simon, EdD is the Education Director of the Center for Medical Simulation and directs the Institute for Medical Simulation.

About the Boston Simulation Community Research and Education Meeting:
Our meetings provide a friendly and informal venue for simulation educators and researchers to present work-in-progress, acquaint each other with relevant ideas from other disciplines and connect with others. We meet the 2nd Tuesday of each month. Please join us! 　    

Up-coming meetings:    

December 13th:     

Measuring Problem Representation Among Preclinical Medical Students Following Mannequin Simulations    

Emily Hayden, MD, MEd, Gilbert Program in Medical Simulation, Harvard Medical School, Department of Emergency Medicine and Massachusetts General Hospital Learning Lab    

Clinical reasoning is an important skill for medical students to acquire during both their pre-clinical and clinical years.  Based on the work on teaching problem representation as a framework for clinical reasoning, the purpose of this project was to develop an instrument capable of detecting differences between students who were trained to use problem representation versus those who were not.     

January  10th: Preparation and preview for International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare, 2012