Innovation
The establishment of an interprofessional high fidelity simulation training in the acute emergency care setting for final year medical, nursing and midwifery students.
What prompted innovation?
Enhancing patient safety is increasingly recognised to be essential to providing a quality health care environment and this has been recognised by several national institutions (NICE, 2007, IOM 2000). Such reviews document that although we record patients’ deterioration well we often fail to respond appropriately (NPSA, 2007). Therefore patient safety needs to be central to the NHS as well as being established at the centre of all education and training. Didactic or lecture based teaching alone does not change practice behaviours. Applied integrated skills based programmes are linked with behavioural change (Tsai et al, 2006).
What makes innovation different?
In my view this form of training allows interprofessional education to really reach its full potential by placing student into ‘real life situations’ within a safe environment so allowing them to gain an appreciation of each other’s roles, communication and team working skills.
Changes in practice
- For the initial training the students undertook pre- and post-course OSCE’s which demonstrated increases in both technical (p=0.029) and non-technical skills (p=0.052).
- From verbal feedback from newly qualified students increases have also been reported in acute care situations as well as in clinical decision making skills.
Impact
- From repeated student evaluations the feedback has always been extremely positive “Exceptional Course”, “Everyone should do this course”, “Very enjoyable and a great learning experience”, “Best study day ever!”, “Much more and for longer please”.
- The training was also shortlisted by the British Journal of Medicine for their Educational Excellence in 2010 as well as being presented at the Ottawa medical conference in 2010 and at ASPIH in 2011.
Dissemination
The training was successfully piloted for year 2 midwifery students and year 4 medical students but put on hold due to the financial implications involved. However with the developments and interests only rising within high fidelity simulation it is an area still under review.