Simulcast Journal Club June 2019


Introduction :  

Simulcast Journal Club is a monthly series that aims to encourage simulation educators to explore and learn from publications on Healthcare Simulation Education.  Each month we publish a case and link a paper with associated questions for discussion.  Inspired by the ALiEM MEdIC series, we moderate and summarise the discussion at the end of the month, including exploring the opinions of experts from the field. 

The journal club relies heavily on your participation and comments and while it can be confronting to post your opinions on an article online, we hope we can generate a sense of “online psychological safety” enough to empower you to post!  Your thoughts are highly valued and appreciated, however in depth or whatever your level of experience.  We look forward to hearing from you. 

Title :  “All About Eve 

The Articles : 

Brazil, V., Purdy, E., Alexander, C. and Matulich, J. (2019). Improving the relational aspects of trauma care through translational simulation. Advances in Simulation, 4(1). 

Purdy, E. (2019). Simulation and Cultural Compression. [online] ICE Blog. Available at: https://icenetblog.royalcollege.ca/2019/03/19/simulation-and-cultural-compression/ [Accessed 29 May 2019]. 

Purdy, E., Alexander, C., Caughley, M., Bassett, S. and Brazil, V. (2019). Identifying and Transmitting the Culture of Emergency Medicine Through Simulation. AEM Education and Training, 3(2), pp.118-128. 

The Case :  

Nimali and Catherine sat together quietly on the outdoor balcony of their shared office.  They had been sipping their International Roast in the kind of comfortable silence that can only be achieved by a friendship forged in shared tribulations and time honoured secrets.  Catherine looked at Nimali with a touch of melancholy, and took a deep breath. 

“I need to tell you something Nimali. I’d been holding off for a while, but given the events that have happened in the last few hours, I figure my news won’t be too upsetting by comparison.”.  She sighed and paused. 

“My wife has been redeployed to Perth, and I don’t want the kids to have another 6 months without her in our lives…” she trailed off and wiped a tear from her eye.  “We need to pack soon.” 

She stared hard into her friend’s eyes.  

A brief look of grief passed across Nimali’s face and she paused and gazed out at the rain again.  It was a few minutes before she had regained her composure.  She reached across and held Catherine’s hand. 

“I’ll miss you too.  I’ll miss our chats on this balcony.  I’ll miss sipping wine with you and Tegan as our kids play together.  But you know what I’ll miss most of all?  The way you teach.”.  She laughed a little as memories bubbled to the surface of her mind. 

“I learned so much from you when I first started here.  Not just from the things you’d say or the workshops you’d run, but from the tone you set with your team on the floor and your learners in the classroom.  I don’t know how you do it, but I can tell when someone’s worked under you.  They have this sense of compassion for the patients and families in their care.  They don’t slur colleagues in the tea room.  They fight for sick kids to get the best treatment possible, whether they’ve got a Hypoplastic Left Heart, or they’re self harming or they have worried parents and a cold.”. 

She gave Catherine a half smile. 

“I think… It’s not something you say, or how you debrief…. Even though all those things help.  It’s something else, Catherine.”… Nimali paused again as she tried to find the words she was looking for.  There it was. 

“You teach them by being the best version of yourself.  Every day.” 

She held a hand gently to her friends cheek and softly kissed her forehead. 

“My god.  We’re going to miss you.” 

Discussion :  

How do we really transmit knowledge through Simulation?  Can we tell the actual learning from ‘take homes’, and debrief discussion points?  Or is there more going on here that’s much more subtle? 

In the last 6 months, Eve Purdy and her colleagues have published a number of articles and blog posts on insights gained from our favourite dual trained Anthropologist and Emergency Physician.  While we’ve discussed these with Eve herself on this month’s Simulcast podcast, it’s now time for you guys to read them and give us your take on the messages we’ve learned about Simulation and its relationship with cultural transmission and relational learning. 

We look forward to your reflections and comments. 

Yes, that’s right.  It’s 3 articles in one month. 

We believe in you. 

References : 

Brazil, V., Purdy, E., Alexander, C. and Matulich, J. (2019). Improving the relational aspects of trauma care through translational simulation. Advances in Simulation, 4(1). 

Purdy, E. (2019). Simulation and Cultural Compression. [online] ICE Blog. Available at: https://icenetblog.royalcollege.ca/2019/03/19/simulation-and-cultural-compression/ [Accessed 29 May 2019]. 

Purdy, E., Alexander, C., Caughley, M., Bassett, S. and Brazil, V. (2019). Identifying and Transmitting the Culture of Emergency Medicine Through Simulation. AEM Education and Training, 3(2), pp.118-128. 


About Ben Symon

Ben is a Paediatric Emergency Physician at The Prince Charles Hospital in Brisbane and a Simulation Educator at Queensland Children's Hospital.

29 thoughts on “Simulcast Journal Club June 2019

  • Kris Phare

    I have no doubt that simulation is both beneficial from both cultural and learning/fact sharing perspectives.

    In my experience, performing regular high quality sims in an environment you are also working, with the regular members of the department/team – is invaluable. I think as they can facilitate the inherent cultural values of an environment (if done correctly), the fact transmitting aspect becomes more natural – people speak up, ask questions, provide constructive feedback. If this can happen between members of different departments then all the better too. It can be incredibly difficult working with a group of new people in a high octane/stressful setting for the first time, and sims provide an avenue to explore those group and inter-personal relationships as well as continue to build on them as time goes on. Further to that I think it’s easier to welcome new members into a well established culture, they settle in quicker, buy-in to the culture quicker, become an effective member of the team, cycle repeats. Interesting topic! Thanks for sharing.

    • Ben Symon Post author

      Thanks Kris! What I’ve taken from your post is that transmitting culture through sims can be an efficient method to welcome new members into a team, build relationships with them but also to role model expected behaviour. Have you had much Simulation happening in the GP setting?

      • Kris Phare

        Not so much in the GP setting sad to say. I suspect this is down primarily to the ‘time is money’ feeling in many practices, which is a little bit more palpable than in hospital settings (IMO). We do have a resus area with all the equipment here in this practice but no simulations as yet. Plenty of role-playing for history taking however! Which is a little less time and resource intensive.

    • Eve

      Hi Kris,

      Thanks for your thoughts! Your perspective around using simulation to help new people “fit in” is very much in keeping in what we found with the simulated emergency department that we ran with medical students. Simulation can act as a moment of “cultural compression” – a time where the signals around values and beliefs are particularly strong. This has benefits and drawbacks, but mostly means that we should probably understand that what happens in the simulation room with respect to cultural transmission may be amplified beyond our day to day work!

      Eve

  • Jenn Dale-Tam

    Simulation and culture have a symbiotic relationship where one shapes the other and vice versa. This becomes more evident, I find, if the clinician(s) that wrote the scenario and facilitate it are entrenched in the real environment they are trying to replicate. Explicit translation of culture in simulation happens through conscious role modeling of facilitators and senior members of a team during the scenario continuing into the debrief, especially if values or norms are written into the objectives. Implicit translation occurs through cues, communication and reactions of team members when behaving as the would in the clinical environment. Cultural translation, whether purposeful or not, can have negative and positive effects in the long term. In my experience simulation has a positive effect.

    Over the course of a 2 year period working with the same nurses, but various interprofessional teams with during in situ simulation I noticed the way junior nurses changed their behaviour interacting with senior members of the medical team. In the beginning they were reluctant and shy in the debriefs to express what they needed from the medical team in regards to clear communication and needs in a crisis situation for safe patient care. Through a purposeful strategy on my part during the debriefs role modeling effective communication and respect with senior medical personal the nurses became more forthcoming in the debriefs to the point that I barely had to facilitate. The conversations happened naturally between the interprofessional teams. It was a true pleasure to witness.

    Simulation is a powerful tool for cultural transmission in the healthcare environment.

    Thank you for this topic.

    • Ben Symon Post author

      Thanks Jenn, it’s always so lovely to have you with us here. I strongly agree with regards to the symbiotic nature of Simulation and Cultural Compression/Transmission. One thing i’ve noted in your comments is that you differentiate between intentional and unintentional use of Sim as an intervention for this process. I think what I love about this series of articles is that they highlight an awareness of these concepts that I do not think was being explictly, effectively described in Simulation Literature. It’s such an important aspect of what we do, but I find these articles have given me the words to describe that more effectively.

      In doing so, I think it also allows me to design with that intent in mind.

      One thing that does fascinate me though is how sometimes we create this weird parallel culture. People sense that behaviour expected in SIM is not the same as what is expected on the floor. The same people who speak up in a sim may still be quiet in real life, because the cues they’re getting are different, and they reflexively alter their behaviour in accordance to this. It sounds like your deliberate strategy of using sims to encourage nurses to contribute more to professional discussions, can I ask what your reflections are about how it translated to the clinical unit?

      • Eve

        Hi Jenn (and Ben),

        Thanks for reading and commenting!

        This year, being entrenched in thinking about simulation + culture, I agree with both the importance of implicit/explicit messaging. I think mindfulness of these goals as facilitators and participants will go a long way.

        I like your idea of actually including culture (values, beliefs and practices) into the potential learning objectives…in a way making the implicit explicit for those teaching and learning. Most cultural learning is implicit but value-signalling is also important! Even having a simulation program (and what that looks like) is a cultural signal itself….

        You are so very right in saying that there are a whole potential # of important factors that affect behaviour int he natural environment that do not necessarily come to play in the simulated environment. Sorting out the dose, and targets of a sim program to affect culture change might be the next step!

        Always happy to chat more.

        Eve

        • Jenn Dale-Tam

          Hi Eve,

          I could not agree with you more about value signalling as being important. I sign post the importance of having the patient as the center care for nurses. This became evident when I practiced as an ICU nurse looking after a very ill patient with multiple pressors, intubated, sedated and on continuous dialysis. I was so focused on the machines I forgot about the patient underneath all.On my next set of shifts I looked after the same patient who was much better, extubated and communicating with staff. He remembered my voice and told me how alone he felt while I was looking after him before, that he was not included in any of the care. This was an “ah-ha” moment for me in my career, from that day forward I always communicated with the patient first before providing care, even if they could not communicate back. Now as an educator I stress the importance of this through simulation and many times during the debrief my saying of “we are nursing patients not machines” comes up. Many healthcare professionals get tied up in the technical skills of their professions and forget about the patient underneath.

          I had not thought of it as culture at the time, but on reflection, have come to appreciate it as such.Thanks for bringing this forward.

      • Jenn Dale-Tam

        Hi Ben,

        I’ve seen junior nurses (<2 years) have more confidence to approach members of the inter-professional team, especially senior ones, early in the start of their careers since the implementation of our in-situ simulation program through purposeful role modeling in the debriefs. As a result, the junior nurses go directly to the care team when they have a concern or a need for their patients instead of through a senior nurse. This is also reciprocated from our surgical residents as well. Each have established their professional relationships early. In our daily discharge rounds the junior nurses have a strong voice for their patients. We are truly trying to establish a culture of inter-professionalism and in-situ simulation has helped transmit some of that.

        • Benjamin Symon

          Oh how fantastic to hear Jenn, how wonderful to see deliberate cultural interventions leading to visible outcomes in clinical practice. Living the dream!

  • Benjamin Symon

    I’d like to comment specifically on Eve’s blog post at icenet blog.

    A couple decades ago when I was about 18 I met my first boyfriend and we ventured to a local bar for a drink. Almost all of my memories of that night surround a sequence of events that occurred after we furtively held hands at our table in a corner of the room. Within minutes, a bouncer had arrived to stand with folded arms next to our table, making direct eye contact at both of us. He stood there for a period of time until we stopped hand holding, and then Trent quietly kissed me on the cheek. As he did so I looked across the room, and saw two women laughing at us as he did so. My memories of that quiet attempt at romance are primarily dominated by those two small events. Neither particularly harmful.

    Reflections of experiences like that came up vividly when I read these papers about the concept of cultural compression. As Eve describes, the concept of Cultural Compression is when “the norms of society bear in upon one with the greatest intensity.”. While this is proposed through an educational context, it was a clear description of a number of experiences I recall vividly throughout my life but didn’t necessarily contextualise within a sociological perspective. To shift those behaviours from negative individual experiences to an understanding of cultural norms at the time of the events is to me, a healing one, but also a revelation.

    I think for me that informs why this concept resonates so strongly for me within an educational concept. The messages we send each other when role playing in Sim, how we design our scenarios and the behaviours we role model throughout simulation in any context are powerful messages that our colleagues expertly adapt to.

    Wise words from Eve, and I’m very grateful for them.

    • Eve

      Thanks for sharing your story, Ben. I am glad that the term has been helpful in processing some stand out events. Shame that it happened. Your story for me highlights the point that it’s potentially hard to predict which small actions or decisions will have the biggest impact as they land (in sim and in life). I can almost guarantee that neither that bouncer or those girls remember their actions that night or the unfortunate lasting impact.

      Just like those idiots at the bar, we are bound to get it all wrong occasionally (though hopefully with less hurtful intent). It’s possible though that we can prevent some harm (and do some good) with mindfulness and reflexivity around cultural signalling in the process of designing/facilitating simulation. I think it is something that we owe our learners and our colleagues. I reckon (again in sim and in life) that kindness and generosity of spirit are the best way to stay out of trouble.

      • Ben Symon Post author

        Thanks Eve, No harm done and life is good, and isn’t it wonderful how much the world has changed. But to me it was just meant as an illustration of how I’ve contextualised your teaching and reflected on it rather than “woe is me’ing”. The lessons I’ve taken from your articles is that there is teaching and learning in every interaction we have, that culture exerts a powerful force on our behaviours and that naming that explicitly can help us actively shape the conversation rather than letting culture subconsciously effect our teaching.

        • Eve

          Haha – you never seem the woe is me’ing type Ben!
          Agree – the best defence is a good offence!

          Eve

  • Jessica Stokes-Parish

    Hi Ben, Eve and all!

    Firstly, I want to acknowledge the diversity in the story you have presented here – thank you.

    In response to the scenario – from my experience as a clinician, educator and parent – the answer to the final question is a resounding “YES”!

    I love the work that Eve et al have explored, and I’m so pleased to see Relational Coordination used as a theoretical framework and methodology in health professions teams in critical care. I am more and more convinced than ever that it is our relationships that underpin the success of teams success, and as a result – patient outcomes.

    As I reflect, what strikes me is this idea of modelled professionalism. As leaders in the clinical space, we demonstrate what acceptable practice is. If something goes against what we were anticipating, in a meeting, in a clinical situation, how do we respond? Simulation provides us with an opportunity to critically reflect on our values and actions, and, in fact, our world view and how it interacts with those around us. What we do in simulation is typically a reflection of what we do in real life. In this safe container, we can play with that and consciously, deliberately do some “internal work”.

    This is, however, hard stuff. It requires vulnerability, authenticity and a desire to be the best that we can be. It is essential that the simulation space is safe and models the culture that we want to see in real life.

    • Eve Purdy

      Hi Jessica,
      Thanks for reading and commenting.
      I love the idea of simulation as a space for modelled practice and a space to do “internal work”. Interestingly the modelled work is not just in the simulation itself but we model how we can have conversations about our work with respect and intentional movement towards shared knowledge, and shared goals!!!

    • Benjamin Symon

      Thanks so much for this Jess, I’m glad you’re enjoying the story, or at least the representation in it :p
      When you mention the importance of ‘modelled professionalism’, it also makes me wonder how we incorporate role modelling more effectively into our Sims. Sometimes I think it can be so powerful to just see someone do something well, and I wonder whether sometimes we should be building into sims (at the very least for juniors) the opportunity to see some established high quality role modelling.

      • Jessica Stokes-Parish

        Yes, very interesting! I think in healthcare we often remember “the bad” experiences of role models we see, but it would be great to have more opportunities to remember “the good” models. Just the very act of deciding to do this I think would signal the intentional movement towards respect, shared knowledge and shared goals – as Eve alludes to.

        Great article! Look forward to the wrap up.

  • Janine Kane

    Hi everyone, I Enjoyed the three articles however time constraints meant I had to keep coming back to it! I must admit that as a TAFE nursing lecturer I feel a bit out of my depth re: simulation scenarios as most of you are teaching in ICU, A& E and other acute care areas. My speciality is in building confidence and communication in my enrolled nursing students with an end gain of better patient care and safety. My scenarios are based on the everyday tasks and interactions Nurses have on a general ward. My colleague and I have been running this course for a number of years and have quite different styles of teaching. Despite this our underlying goal is the same. That being to build trust with our students, make it fun, encourage their questions and the ‘I’m curious’ way of seeking out information or clarification when they are unsure of things in the clinical area. When we have had other staff observing us (often the naysayers), they are surprised at how easy it is to interact with the students, how positive the students are and finally again, that it is an enjoyable way to both teach and learn in. Simulation is more that just using responsive manikins and high risk scenarios to teach communication. Providing strong and empathic role models as well as establishing trust and a safe environment for learning to occur for nervous and anxious students is now paramount. With the ever decreasing experience students have in the clinical arena, simulation can fill the gap for demonstrating appropriate and professional behaviour including empathy so students are better prepared for the clinical practicum and pt centred care of patients.

    • Eve Purdy

      Hi Janine,

      Thanks for reading and commenting! The work that you are doing sounds awesome. Simulations related to everyday tasks and interactions are amazing fodder for understanding culture/values and building mutual respect. The simulations that we describe in the Advances paper are often technically challenging/high fidelity but to be honest one of my favourite simulation exercises we run is a daily mental rehearsal of team pre-briefings. This really is just people doing an everyday task, and one of the less “glamorous” portions of our job but creates so much opportunity for modelling!

      All the best as you sim on!

      Eve

    • Benjamin Symon

      Thanks so much for coming as always Janine, I really appreciate your comments and very much understand the pressure of real life demands. I particularly enjoyed your comments regarding the importance of the safe space you create with your nursing students, but also how important sim can be towards providing a space to demonstrate appropriate behaviour and empathy.

  • Sarah Janssens

    The Mater Sim team were digesting curry leftovers as we jotted down these points of our discussion about the trauma team sim paper.

    Some major points of the discussion we had in between nibbling on naan were as follows:

    We are eternally grateful to Eve and team for the enormous amount of work that has gone into this research.

    It was a paper that made us nod our heads in agreement. We highlighted how these moments of cross professional/disciplinary understanding are like crack cocaine to debriefers!

    We pondered on the difficulty of have multiple departments involved, and wondered if this is ever possible in sim centre sims – would love to hear if anyone else has been able to get >3 species involved in a simulation centre sim!

    We thought about how important the leadership of Vic (and undoubtedly others) has been in developing and guiding positive cultural changes – and the importance of this happening in parallel between the sim and real world. How do nurse educators do this when they rarely have the opportunity to straddle education and clinical work like doctors have the luxury of doing?

    Finally, we appreciated the use of relational co-ordination to frame this work, and noted how we would like to use the language of relational co-ordination more explicitly in sim and life – particularly emphasising “mutual respect” more than we usually do.

    Thanks Simulcast team and mostly – Thanks Eve and team

    • Eve Purdy

      Sarah,

      Thanks for sharing team Mater’s thoughts! I am always sightly envious of the curry meetings.
      The challenges associated with providing similar experiences in a simulation centre is a really interesting one. I have been involved with a program where residents/registrars from a variety of programs and nurses come together for resuscitation scenarios. It often provides lots of fodder for for inter professional discussion and these differences/similarities in approaches are often the starting point for my debriefing!

      Glad you liked the RC framework, we have found it very helpful!

      I’m back in Canada now but look forward to our paths crossing again soon!

      Eve

    • Benjamin Symon

      Thanks so much Sarah for an aromatic and mouth watering journal club commentary!
      I definitely hope I can get to the next one!

  • Jenny Rudolph

    When I was a kid, the American anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Geertz rented the cottage next to ours on the shore of Silver Lake, in Barnard, Vermont every summer. Each morning before breakfast, he paced back-and-forth on a 50-meter stretch of shore for an hour or more. I watched him from the porch of my house as the sun glinted off the lake and his canvas tennis shoes got soaked on the dewy lake shore. I wondered what he was doing. His habit was so regular that by the end of the four weeks, there was a well-worn path through the summer grass.

    It wasn’t until my second year at Harvard college, struggling with the readings in an intro to Anthropology class, that I had any clue what he might have been up to: thinking. Maybe Geertz had been letting his brain passively nurture the ideas behind the books and articles that helped revolutionize how anthropologists and other social scientists thought about qualitative research. Perhaps he was thinking about whether someone from one culture could even presume to categorize or make sense another culture (The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973) or how and if causal arguments about culture were even possible. Maybe he was thinking about whether we might be better served by rich description that helped one make one’s way through the thicket of another culture. (Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture, 1973).

    Fast forward 30+ years and on a visit to the Gold Coast of Queensland, rather than looking down at the shore of Silver Lake, I’m looking down from Vic Brazil’s balcony to the neighboring patio where Eve Purdy is tapping away on her computer.

    Though I am no anthropologist I bring a social scientist’s eye to the transformational work that I have watched take form over the last couple years from the dynamic duo of Eve Purdy and Vic Brazil.

    The work behind this months’ articles has dramatically shifted my view of the possible roles of simulation in learning, and in shaping and revealing organizational culture in healthcare. Unlike Clifford Geertz, Eve, Vic and team are not studying cultures separate from theirs, but rather ones in which they are embedded. However, like Geertz, whose work gradually forced us to question some of the foundational assumptions of existing anthropology, I find Eve, Vic and colleagues challenging us in the simulation community to rethink some basic assumptions.

    Culture is revealed and transmitted via simulation
    While this may be a blinding flash of the obvious, I had not thought before about the role of simulation in revealing and transmitting healthcare culture. This simple idea was a revelation. I found many other things to like about Eve Purdy, Charlotte Alexander, Melissah Cuaghley, Shane Bassett, and Victoria Brazil’s paper Identifying and transmitting the culture of emergency medicine through simulation, but I will highlight two that I found most compelling.

    1) It is the process of communication that conveys culture as much as the content. Much of what we consider unimportant or that we don’t even consider in designing simulations actually conveys culture. The challenges we pose learners in simulations “foregrounds” certain clinical management problems. Eve and team’s study this was a wide variety of patient presentations in a busy simulated half day in the ED. But what Eve et al. highlight is that culture is equally or more intensely conveyed in process; the process of care, and the process of teaching and learning. For example, Eve and team highlight the structure of the micro-conversations between students and preceptors: “[Preceptors] demonstrated desired communication strategies. Students would then copy these strategies, often borrowing exact phrases.” This type of “mimetic” learning is, they argue, a positive aspect of a hidden or, I might say, unconscious curriculum that transmits culture.
    2) Culture is “compressed” in assessment or other high stakes micro communications. Some moments of communication land intensely on learners. In an instant they have a window onto how their aspirations, thinking, and actions are seen/accepted/assessed. The patterns of conversation around assessment, is one’s performance adequate, acceptable, professional? Can be particularly revealing/shaping of culture. In the Icenet blog post, Eve argues that what matters—to shaping clinical identity, values, practice—is often distilled in short interactions in which a learner is assessed.

    The concept of “cultural compression” helped me see some of my own work, on balancing judgment and acceptance in high stakes conversations, in a new light. I am very interested in how micro conversations that include assessment build organizational culture. In the not-very-catchily named theory of “structuration,” organizational scholars have argued that culture is not monolithic but rather made of tiny pieces of interaction that both reveal and shape culture.

    Seeing micro conversations that include judgment as moments of “cultural compression” is illuminating. When someone conveys harsh judgment, hides or sugarcoats their judgment, or conveys a fair judgment, each of these communications reveal and reinforce cultural norms about learning, performance, and what is discussible. I have been passionate about the importance of dialogue that makes room for “good judgment” paired with acceptance because I see suppressing or hiding judgment as reinforcing a culture of silencing, indirectness and even shame. I find the idea of cultural compression useful because it highlights how micro communications form the nucleus of various cultural norms.

    It’s the relationships, Stupid!
    Vic, Eve, Charlotte Alexander and Jack Matulich’s paper, Improving the relational aspects of trauma care through translational simulation has continued a dramatic shift in my thinking launched by Vic Brazil’s and Bill McGaghie’s papers advocating for a focus on translational aspects of simulation.

    In their new paper Vic, Eve, Charlotte and Jack up-end some of the taken-for-granted assumptions about the purpose and focus of our work in healthcare simulation.

    Victoria, Eve and team shift our attention from the conventional intended consequences of simulation to the unintended ones. They pivot our attention from the educators’ focus on knowledge and skills to the secondary and often unintentional relational and cultural consequences of simulations. The paper asks us to focus on the relational outcomes of simulation. They do this by measuring the impact of simulations on “relational coordination.” They looked at how trauma simulations, with complex clinical management challenges as a focus, nevertheless influenced the relational outcomes of shared goals, shared knowledge of each others’ tasks, and mutual respect.

    This change in focus toward relational outcomes might start a cascade of change in how we can embed and thread simulation through our undergrad, graduate and practicing clinical contexts. Tt broadens the aperture to include building “collective competence,” a focus on how individuals co-create excellent clinical management.

    • Benjamin Symon

      Hi Jenny, thankyou so much for the poetry of your words here and for deepening the discussion with regards to the critical learning points from these papers. I hear from your response that these works are a significantly new perspective to our work in sim, particularly in regards to the shifting of unconscious and implicit learning towards more explicit consideration.

      Your phrase “Micro communications form the nucleus of various cultural norms.” is a delightful haiku as well that I’d very much like to steal.
      Looking forward to chatting more soon,
      Ben

  • Chris Speirs

    I’ve seen countless people in medical education get caught up in the nitty gritty, the specifics, the qualitative stuff. I’ve certainly done it, it’s where we feel safe. Something I’ve learned this year, and I think these articles really highlight, is the true value add we can offer.

    I previously asked Vic why she sends the registrars pre-reading before our weekly sims. The topics clearly give the game away. What’s the point in that? The answer is that I was missing the point. The weekly sims aren’t supposed to catch the registrars out in not knowing how to manage a post partum haemorrhage. They’re about building teams equipped to manage a multitude of sick patients. Teams who know each other’s names, know each other’s roles. Teams who know the standard we work to and hold each other to it. I think the same can be said for the trauma service.

    ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’

  • Noel Roberts

    Really interesting paper and discussion, that gave me insight and structure around my experiences of simulation and teaching. We often experience the “culture” but our natural inclination is to find value in the knowledge/skills we learn/teach. I’ve recently been involved in inter-disciplinary airway simulation teaching with emergency and anaesthesia. We started off thinking it was all about the knowledge, skills, algorithms and processes. But now increasingly realize that the mutual respect and relationships we’ve created are the real gold from this program. Reading these papers gave me that insightful moment of just how important our communication of culture (good or bad) is.
    Cultural compression is an interesting concept and it makes sense that our culture may be most profoundly transmitted during high stakes experiences such as exams/testing or immersive simulation. I think its something we really need to be mindful of when considering our approach to assessment.
    The relational coordination approach provides a really good structure to think about simulation and debriefing. Is this a tool that is currently used in simulation or has it mainly been used in business applications?

    • Ben Symon

      Hi Noel thanks so much for coming along! My understanding from the paper is that the relational coordination framework was developed in the business sector but translates well to medical teams as well. I agree there is much to reflect on here, particularly our true motivations in assessment!

Comments are closed.