Dr Chong Shin Yuet, Director, Simulation, shares her thoughts on conducting the SIMS SET (Anaesthesiology) from 2018 to 2021
Let’s start at the very beginning….
SIMS (SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Medical Simulation) has been running Simulation Educator Training (SET) courses since its humble beginnings as IMSE.
Simulation instructor courses were initially conducted by foreign faculty from EuSim but as our local simulation faculty became more experienced, SIMS started running SIMS SET courses with local simulation educators. However, residency programmes sponsored only their physician faculty for SIMS SET courses, which meant that residents and nurses had to use their limited training funds or pay out of their own pockets to attend.
A wish GRANTed
Thankfully, our ACP recognized the importance of simulation education in Anaesthesiology and awarded an education grant of $36000 in 2018 to sponsor any doctor or nurse in our ACP to attend SIMS SET (Anaesthesiology).
We ran one course a year in 2018, 2019 and 2021 (2020’s course was postponed to 2021 due to the Covid pandemic). This was also the first SIMS SET that was tailored to just one discipline, whereas all other SIMS SET courses were open to all. One big advantage of an anaesthesiology-specific course was that everyone was familiar with one another, which meant psychological safety was easily established. The participants could also write anaesthesia or critical care scenarios without worrying that the team in the hot seat might not have the requisite clinical knowledge to manage the patient’s condition.
Our post-event questionnaire found that all respondents agreed the mock OSCE was useful for learning PE skills, with 80% agreeing strongly. Interestingly, while all respondents found being a candidate useful, 8% disagreed that being an SP value-added, and 20% found practicing on SPs inadequate in learning PE skills. This suggested to us that students may prefer playing an active role in learning PE skills. Finally, we found that the majority of respondents (44%) ranked senior medical students (fourth and fifth year) as their most-preferred assessor, over senior doctors (27%), junior doctors (16%) and immediate seniors (third-year students) (12%).
To date, 36 doctors (from senior consultants to senior residents) and 24 nurses (from ICU, AU, PACU and OT Scrub) have graduated from SIMS SET (Anaesthesiology), equipped with the basic knowledge and skills to craft learning objectives based on CRM (Crisis Resource Management) principles, write simulation scenario and run it, and conduct a post-simulation debrief. They were also given an insight into what goes on behind the scene by the simulation technologists, peeking into the insides of the high-fidelity manikins and practising moulage on themselves, creating very realistic bruises and wounds on their own faces and limbs.
Through the years….
One of the Zoom debriefing sessions during SIMS SET 2021.
SIMS SET has always featured plenty of interaction between participants and faculty, and hands-on practice on running simulation scenarios. Throw social distancing measures into the mix and things are bound to get a little complicated. This year’s SIMS SET was a hybrid of zoom lectures/ debriefings while small groups were allowed to have hands-on practice in the simulation lab.
There was no intermingling of groups and mask-wearing was compulsory. For the first time, debriefers sat in another room and debriefed the scenario participants over Zoom. I can imagine that for a beginner debriefer, who not only has to try to remember the phases of debriefing and craft appropriate questions, but now has to deal with WIFI disruptions and inscrutable expressions behind masks, the whole experience must have been quite a stressful one!
Post event....
Kudos to the faculty and learners who gamely took all these challenges in their stride. Surprisingly, the overall evaluation score for the 2021 SIMS SET was also the highest at a remarkable 4.83
In their own words……
“Very inspiring and eye-opening experience!”
“Debriefing techniques can be applied to daily work and any crises that occur in real life.”
“Well-designed, with enough hands-on experience for everyone”
“Well-conducted, very practical, free-of-charge!”
“Hope that this course can be continued in the future!”
We certainly hope so too!