The field of healthcare simulation continues to make tremendous strides to revolutionize healthcare education through clinical simulation research being conducted across the globe. Multiple peer-reviewed journals now focus on clinical simulation research. This HealthySimulation.com article by Content Manager Teresa Gore, PhD, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, CHSE-A, FSSH, FAAN, provides an overview of some of the latest clinical simulation highlights as of March 2025.
The role and impact of the simulation technician in health science higher education: A scoping review: Simulation enhances healthcare education by enabling learning in environments closely aligned with practice. Simulation is often supported by simulation technicians with little evidence supporting their role or impact. This study aimed to define the role and impact of simulation technicians in healthcare higher education. A scoping review was conducted of literature published in English, CINAHL, Medline, ERIC, and Web of Science were searched.
Sixteen included studies were analyzed to identify categories of roles and key themes. Five key simulation technician roles were identified: Setup; Maintenance; Supporting design and facilitation of learning; Operational/support delivery and Being part of the team. Simulation technicians supported educators to focus on teaching, by ensuring simulation equipment was available, runs optimally, and problem solved in-situ technical difficulties during design/preparation and delivery of simulation. Simulation technicians’ impact was associated with their expertise, knowledge and availability as a highly valued simulation team member.
Simulation allows students to acquire necessary skills to provide best practice in a safe and controlled learning environment. Simulation technicians’ presence in the simulation environment impacts the effectiveness of simulation and their absence is viewed as a barrier. Their technological knowledge contributes to smooth running at every stage of the simulation process.
Simulation is advancing rapidly and requires innovative ideas, knowledge and expertise of simulation technicians.
The Integration of Quality Improvement and Health Care Simulation: A Scoping Review:
Quality improvement (QI) and simulation employ complementary approaches to improve the care provided to patients. There is a significant opportunity to leverage these disciplines, yet little is known about how they are utilized in concert. The purpose of this study is to explore how QI and simulation have been used together in health care. This scoping review includes studies published between 2015 and 2021 in 4 databases: CINAHL, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus.
The search yielded 921 unique articles.18 articles met the inclusion criteria and specifically described QI and simulation collaborative projects. Of the 18 articles, 28% focused on improvements in patient care, 17% on educational interventions, 17% on the identification of latent safety threats (LSTs) that could have an impact on clinical care, 11% on the creation of new processes, 11% on checklist creation, and 6% on both LST identification and educational intervention. The review revealed that 61% of the included studies demonstrated a concurrent integration of simulation and QI activities, while 33% used a sequential approach.
Crisis management in the operating room: A systematic review of simulation training to develop non-technical skills: Crises in the operating room, often resulting from human factors, endangers patient safety. Simulation-based training to develop non-technical skills shows promise in managing these crises. This review examines the simulation techniques, targeted healthcare professionals, non-technical skills, crisis scenarios, and evaluation metrics used in operating room crisis management training. A systematic review was conducted with data from
MEDLINE, APA PsycInfo, and Web of Science databases were searched for peer-reviewed articles published between January 2004 and March 2024.
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This systematic review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The review protocol has been registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF) (https://osf.io/7bsc8). The inclusion criteria were as follows: (1) The study population comprised healthcare and medical professionals or students; (2) the intervention involved a simulated learning or training experience; (3) the outcomes focused on non-technical skills or crew resource management; (4) the training setting was the operating room (simulated or real); and (5) the learning scenarios depicted a crisis or an adverse event.
This systematic review identified 29 eligible articles. The findings highlight the predominance of high-fidelity simulations, primarily targeting medical staff rather than nurses or other healthcare professionals. Training focused on communication, teamwork, situation awareness, problem solving, and decision making, with scenarios mostly addressing patient deterioration. Assessments reached up to Kirkpatrick’s Level 3, demonstrating a positive training impact through learners’ reactions and learning metrics rather than behavior and organizational results.
Despite their effectiveness, current training practices exhibit limitations. Incorporating nurses and other paramedical staff in interprofessional training, as well as emphasizing team-related scenarios and evaluating behavioral changes in practice, could enhance training effectiveness. This has implications for interprofessional healthcare education and skills transfer to real-world settings, ultimately improving patient safety.
Updated evidence underpins the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice: The Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best PracticeⓇ (INACSL Standards Committee et al., 2021) are 14 years ‘young’ in 2025! INACSL maintains a commitment to advancing both the art and science of healthcare simulation. For three years, the Standards Committee has partnered with healthcare librarians and interprofessional simulation experts to plan and implement a series of systematic reviews of the literature to solidify the Cornerstones of Best Practice (INACSL, 2021) program. Systematic reviews of the literature supporting professional integrity, prebriefing, and facilitation as well as an umbrella review of the literature supporting debriefing (These will be upcoming publications).
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The systematic and umbrella reviews elevate the quality of the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice with critical appraisals of the literature and focus on healthcare learners’ knowledge, skill, and attitude outcomes. The Standards Committee followed the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) methodology and used JBI critical appraisal tools to examine the evidence underpinning criteria in each of the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice. Further, the Healthcare Simulation Dictionary (Lioce et al., 2024) served as the foundation for simulation-based education terminology.
A Systematic Review of the Evidence for Using Simulation to Replace Clinical Experience for Paramedic Students: In health professions education there is a shortage of clinical training opportunities and an increasing demand for workers, creating a need for alternative methods to clinical placements. One alternative method to replace clinical experience is simulation-based education. Currently, the efficacy of simulation as a clinical replacement in paramedicine is unknown. To understand the current state of evidence for substituting clinical experience with simulation in paramedic education, provide implications for SBE implementation, and direct further research in this area. A systematic review, following the PRISMA checklist guide, was conducted. Five databases were searched. Primary source studies of all designs investigating replacing clinical experience in paramedicine were included, with eight articles assessed for eligibility screening. Three studies were selected for final inclusion, quality assessment and critical appraisal.
Inter-rater reliability was good for the quality assessment and quality appraisal ratings were moderate to strong, though the articles were of low levels of evidence. None of the studies directly addressed whether simulation-based education can be used as a clinical replacement, though both learners and program directors found value in simulation and felt a combination of simulation and clinical time was best. Communication skills and high-acuity low-frequency situations were identified as most appropriate for simulation substitution.
The findings of the systematic review indicate a willingness to engage in simulation to replace some clinical experience and certain skill areas that could be suitable for simulation, but no practical recommendations can be made due to the low level of study design based on the levels of evidence and lack of evidence for direct clinical substitution. Simulation as a replacement for clinical experience has support in other health professions, but further research is needed in paramedicine to investigate its efficacy and to inform future educational practice.
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