150 Advances in Simulation: Lifting the lid on the ‘safe container’ of healthcare simulation 


Vic speaks with Eve Purdy about their recent paper in Advances in Simulation – Taking simulation out of its “safe container”—exploring the bidirectional impacts of psychological safety and simulation in an emergency department. We talk about the shared experience of many simulation educators that led to the research question – How does psychological safety in the workplace affect that experienced in the ‘sim space’ and how does that leak back in turn? Eve describes the methods and findings, and refers to the wealth of literature on psychological safety in simulation that this paper builds upon – research by Roison O’Donovan, Jenny Rudolph’s foundational ‘safe container article, Michaela Kolbe’s work on the ‘dynamic balancing act’ in simulation debriefing and more. 

The episode includes quotes and audio snippets from simulation colleagues – Ben Symon, Chris Roussin, Jenny Rudolph, Walter Eppich and Michaela Kolbe

For more on psychological safety in simulation and the workplace – these prior simulcast episodes on the ‘safe container’ and ‘rapport’ might be of interest, together with Eve’s recent talk to RCEM on psychological safety in emergency medicine. 

This is the latest in our Simulcast collaboration with Advances in Simulation – an open access Simulation Journal. Thanks also to the teams at Gold Coast Health Emergency Department and to the Emergency Medicine Research Foundation who provided grant funding for the study