HealthySimulation.com is celebrating 10 years of healthcare simulation content this month! Started as a “nights and weekends project” in April of 2010 by then Clinical Simulation Center of Las Vegas Executive Director Lance Baily, the website, newsletter, and social media accounts has gone on to become the world’s leading resource website for simulation in healthcare champions. In the past decade, almost 1,000,000 Healthcare Simulation Champions from every country around the world have visited HealthySimulation.com, reading over 2,000,000 pages of content! Today we hear from our Founder who takes a look back at some of our favorite medical simulation articles from the past ten years. Support our celebration by sharing your favorite HealthySimulation.com article with friends on social media with our tags @HealthySim on Twitter, @HealthySim on Facebook, and @HealthySim on LinkedIn — we can’t wait to see what your favorite article is!
From 30 Followers to 30,000 — Supporting Champions is Our Mission
In April of 2010, HealthySimulation.com Founder Lance Baily was googling for Clinical Simulation Resources but finding very little. Besides annual conferences and vendor websites, there was little in the way of online resources to support new sim lab professionals who for whatever reason was unable to attend a regional, national or international event. “I just wanted to create a website to share the resources our simulation program needed, and so with my nights and weekends I started building this little website to help share the lessons that helped others find what we had”, shared Lance. “The website had about 30 people come to the website the first month, most of which I think were my mother (Dr. Kim Baily) — and even though we weren’t engaging that many people, I felt like each article we produced was so fun to write and share about — I was instantly hooked on writing”. Starting with just 3 articles per week, the website followers soon grew, slowly at first but consistently over time.
The website hit 30,000 unique visitors for the first time just before April of this year, a record breaking month of traffic! “Supporting the most number of of healthcare simulation champions possible has always been our mission — and we are thrilled to the moon and back that the community has found our work to be so helpful. We get emails from folks all over the world asking questions or sending appreciation — it keeps us going”! Now producing 5 new articles a week (M-F), Dr. Baily is a regular contributor to Lance’s own articles to the website, along with dozens of other writers who have submitted content to share with the global audience, with more than 2,000 published over the past 10 years.
“Our fans have been our greatest motivation — hearing their success stories to improve performance outcomes for educational, training, and patient safety initiatives with the resources we have shared — that is everything for us” Lance shared passionately. “This is not only about improving the lives of patients, but healthcare professionals and healthcare systems as well. As a child, I saw how hard my parents worked as clinicians and educators, and having been born in a time that empowered the use of innovative new technologies, I’ve always wanted to appreciate their dedication and passion by maximizing their efforts as much as possible”, Lance continued. “Medical errors are the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States, and that is not only obviously a tragedy for patients and their families, but for healthcare providers as well — the system needs to evolve to help everyone involved with healthcare to have better lives”.
HealthySimulation.com’s entire team of writers and developers are so appreciative of the individuals, companies, and organizations that have supported the website over the past ten years. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the people and organizations that have supported our call to arms, and we thank each and every one of our supporters, media partners, and clients for their guidance and engagement”. We certainly can’t wait for the next 10 years — with exciting new announcements coming soon!
Ways to Celebrate HealthySimulation.com’s 10 Year Anniversary
Those nursing simulation, surgical simulation, or otherwise healthcare simulation champions who wish to celebrate HealthySimulation.com’s 10 Year Birthday can do two things: 1) Share their favorite article via social media tagging our accounts and 2) Add our link to their simulation program’s resource webpage. “We can’t wait to see what article is each fan’s favorite!” Lance exclaimed. To share our link, simply copy and paste the text below into your website’s WYSIWG and wallah — you have helped us in a big way!
HealthySimulation.com is the world’s premiere Healthcare Simulation resource website, providing the latest news, conference coverage, research highlights, helpful guides, job listings, product demos, vendor contacts, community sharing, and more!
Some of Our Favorite Articles From the Past Ten Years
Comprehensive List of COVID-19 Medical Simulation Resources: This page has been created to list all of the latest resources creating by or in support of medical simulation programs providing education and training against the spread of COVID-19, aka the Coronavirus. It is absolutely crucial that every healthcare educational and training program in the world immediately review these clinical simulation tools to combat against the spread of the virus. From sim scenarios to research from the front lines in China, to sim lab policy ideas to online learning courses — here are the latest simulation in healthcare tools to fight COVID-19.
Top 50 Clinical Simulation Posts of 2019: Frequently imitated but never beat, here the team was thrilled to unveil our Top 50 Clinical Simulation Articles of 2019! One of our most popular posts all year, here you will the absolute best of medical simulation content from HealthySimulation.com covering the most influential debriefing techniques, new key terms, product innovations, design considerations, job templates, famous tools and many other helpful topics. Please be sure to share this article with all your simulation colleagues to spread the love, and consider sharing your simulation news with us in 2020 – maybe you will make the top too!
Top 10 Healthcare Simulation Articles From the Past 10 Years: Following our article above, here we thought we would take one last look back at the past decade of HealthySimulation.com articles and share some of the Top 10 Medical Simulation Articles from the Past Decade! HealthySimulation.com was launched in April of 2010, so we have the whole decade covered here, from free downloadable vital sign simulators to integrating Pyxis into nursing simulation programs, and from the latest medical simulation jobs to sim tech hiring tips, prehospital simulation scenarios guides and great uses for clinical sim, this is a great recap of the past decade of HealthySimulation.com!
Downloadable NCLEX Test Plan Checklists for Nursing Simulation: HealthySimulation.com has created two checklists based on the latest version of the NCLEX Test Plan which may be used by programs to identify where content is covered throughout the program and help identify where NCLEX content is included in simulation activities. A short form provides a cross check with the main framework below and a second longer form, provides details of each component of the framework.
Healthcare Simulation Scenario Development Checklist w/ Downloadable Form: Healthcare simulation scenarios are designed to address specific learning needs. According to the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation and Learning (INACSL) the first step in scenario development is the completion of a needs assessment. The INACSL simulation design standard provides a sequential plan for scenario development which can be adapted for use in clinical facilities, medical schools and postgraduate medical education. Here, Dr. Kim Baily PhD, MSN, RN, CNE shares the key areas necessary for developing simulation scenarios and provides a downloadable template form!
Physiology: The Force Behind Healthcare Simulation – A Guide for Techs, Part 8: ABGs: In this ongoing series, Dr. Baily shares how why the more closely healthcare simulation matches real life situations (aka fidelity), the more likely that learners will become involved in the learning experience and be less confused. In the clinical setting, healthcare practitioners review past labs or order new ones to help make decisions about appropriate patient care. Medical Simulation technologists often come from technical backgrounds with limited knowledge of physiology. By increasing basic physiological knowledge, simulation technicians can add to their understanding of medicine and become more fully involved in simulation operations, research and development. This series is dedicated to this knowledge!
Gather – Analyze – Summarize: The Simple GAS Method for Healthcare Simulation Debriefing (w/ Quick Template): Healthcare Simulation is divided into three stages, prebriefing, simulation scenario and debriefing. Simulation links theory to practice by means of reflection, critical thinking and improved clinical practice. A variety of creative debriefing strategies may be found in the literature however, the Gather-Analyze-Summarize (GAS) tool is probably one of the easiest to understand. GAS was developed at UPMC’s WISER Simulation Center by John O’Donnell and a team of collaborators. This method allows even novice debriefers to quickly gain skill in debriefing while remaining comfortable with the process. Ideally, all debriefing faculty should receive training and practice in debriefing before they start debriefing on their own. Today we take a closer look at the G.A.S. Debriefing model.
Simulation Technician Entry Level Job Description Downloadable Template: A Simulation Technician/Technologist works in the field of healthcare simulation supporting the many technical aspects of medical simulation. Here, we take a look at the general entry level requirements of a Sim Tech position and provide a downloadable template for your program to use as a starting point. Additional articles related to simulation staffing of Sim Techs and other positions can be found on our Medical Simulation Jobs page, including where to find Sim Techs, how to train them, and what to pay them! There is also a Job Template for Experienced Sim Techs too!
Healthcare Simulation Prebriefing Checkoff Sheet Template: Prebriefing is an important component of healthcare simulation which should be planned along with the simulation scenario development and debriefing activities. Careful scheduling of simulation is important to ensure that learners have the appropriate knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviors associated with a particular simulation. Recently researchers have attempted to more clearly define the steps and activities involved in prebriefing. Various terms such as orientation, briefing and planning phase are found in the literature. The downloadable template above lists some of these activities!
Learning About Simulation From Other Industries:
- What Can Medical Simulation Learn from Scuba Diving?
- Lessons on Debriefing From Documentary Film Production
- A Black Belt in Simulation: What Can Healthcare Education Learn From Martial Arts?
- What Healthcare Simulation Can Learn from The Nuclear Power Industry
- WATS Aviation Simulation Conference Demonstrates the Potential to Healthcare
We appreciate your support and look forward to another 10 years of awesome medical simulation content!
