This week at the M Resort in Las Vegas, the Laerdal SUN Las Vegas 2024 conference took place over three days highlighting healthcare simulation best practices while offering powerful peer networking opportunities, innovative technology demonstrations, and IPEC supported learning sessions. The Laerdal SUN serves as a platform for collaboration, innovation, and simulation advancements that lead to improvements in education and healthcare delivery. The SUN Conference is a place to meet others who have objectives in simulation just like yours and connect with industry-leading experts. Attendees will experience best practices and hands-on demonstrations that help advance simulation training programs across all healthcare disciplines. As a proud Silver Media Sponsor, HealthySimulation.com’s Founder/CEO Lance Baily was on hand to cover the event through this article below.
Rosie Patterson, Vice President of Sales North America at Laerdal Medical opened the show welcoming the audience from around the world to this unique conference event for three days of learning, which include leading keynote speakers, valuable concurrent sessions, networking, collaboration, and honing your CPR skills. Rosie introduced the first keynote speaker, Kellie Bryant, DNP WHNP, CHSE, FSSH, FAAN, Director of the Center for Innovation in Education Excellence for the National League for Nursing. Dr. Bryant has garnered expertise in her field with a teaching career spanning over two decades and 15 years of specialized simulation experience. Within her current role, she is responsible for providing leadership and strategic direction, focusing on developing revenue-generating initiatives that advance teaching excellence and enhance faculty skills for contemporary learners.
Dr. Bryant presented on OB Simulation Success: Building Competencies to Advance Maternal and Newborn Survival, covering the maternal health crisis in the United States, the role of nurses to improve clinical maternal outcomes and strategies to improve healthcare outcomes. Dr. Bryant shared a shocking World Health Organization (WHO) statistic which shows the U.S. has encountered an estimated 125% increase in maternal deaths from 2000 to 2020. The causes of this unfortunate increase includes systemic inequities, disparities in healthcare access and quality, lack of postpartum support, and challenges to education and training included limited curriculum scheduling, lack of specialized faculty, and challenges to clinical site rotations. Specific gaps in maternal curriculum include understanding the roles of Interprofessional team members, limited clinical experiences with postpartum visits, deficient skills in prenatal education, and addressing health disparities.
Dr. Bryant highlighted how clinical simulation technologies, like those available from Laerdal Medical, provide the flexibility and accessibility of training no matter the location to overcome these unique educational challenges. She shared how medical simulation provides the opportunity for enhanced clinical decision-making and critical thinking, improved skill training practice, promotes team communication and collaboration, and standardizes curriculum with structured formatting.
View the exclusive HealthySimulation.com webinar Competency-Based Clinical Education Solutions from Laerdal Medical to learn more!
Society for Simulation in Healthcare President Dr. Barry Issenberg, MD, FSSH, Director & Senior Associate Dean of Research at the Gordon Center for Simulation and Innovation in Medical Education, provided the next plenary session and reviewed competency-based education (CBE), discussed the role of clinical simulation in deliberate practice and mastery learning, and shared evidence of achieving excellence through simulated training methodologies.
New and Announced at Laerdal SUN Las Vegas 2024
AHA Partnership: Laerdal’s North America President Neil Weber thanked Dr. Bryant for her presentation and the community for joining them in Las Vegas. Furthering the power of community, Neil shared an exciting new announcement supporting collaboration in healthcare, with the newly-launched partnership between Laerdal Medical and the American Hospital Association (AHA). Supporting over 5,000 hospitals and 43,000 members, Laerdal will partner with the AHA to apply simulation innovation and analytical insights, and play a foundational role in the new patient safety initiative within the organization.
IPCE Credits: For the first time ever at a Laerdal SUN, IPCE Credits were offered for select learning sessions in support of improving patient care. Many activities have been planned and implemented by Laerdal Medical and the Society for Simulation in Healthcare. The Society for Simulation in Healthcare is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team.
Breakout Sessions Share Best Practices Throughout the Day
Using Translational Simulation to Improve Processes, Outcomes, and Improve Patient Safety (Lisa Resch, MSN, RN, CHSE; Heather Sohlden MSN RN; Nicole Lauf MSN RN NPD-BC) – Team members from Green Bay’s Advocate Health group categorized Latent Safety Threats (LSTs) which can go unnoticed until they cause patient harm. Lisa reminded participants that the British Medical Journal defines LSTs as “system-based threats to patient safety that can materialize at any time and are previously unrecognized by healthcare providers, unit directors or hospital administration.” While LSTs can be caused by individual factors, they are usually caused by a process that was not set up with patient safety in mind, which in most industries is guided by Human Factors. This workshop taught participants how they can use translational simulation to identify and classify LSTs and how simulation champions can partner with quality, risk, patient safety, and other hospital leaders to fix identified threats before they cause patient harm. Heather and Nicole showcased real-world examples from their recent experiences of mitigation strategies used to prevent harm from identified LSTs at Advocate Health.
Simulating Success: Quality Improvement in Hospital Teams (Sarah Beebe, PhD, APRN, CNM, WHNPr, CHSE; Dan Wagner, BS) – The team from Bayhealth Medical Center in Delaware helped to organize a scenario development toolkit workshop, which assisted simulation champion participants with the opportunity work through the challenges of building a quality improvement training event in hospitals. The presenters described a systematic approach to designing, implementing, and evaluating hospital-based simulations aimed at quality improvement and patient safety. Using INACSL’s Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice for Simulation Design, participants worked through the simulation design process using known problems or areas for improvement from their own organizations to plan and design a simulation scenario of their own.
In the evening, Laerdal hosted “The Solutions Bar”, which provided an exceptional chance for attendees to network, explore Laerdal medical products through interactive demos, and get acquainted with the Laerdal Team. Also in attendance at the SUN event were external organizations including Wolters Kluwers, SimX, University of Miami Gordon Center, IngMar Medical, Dynasthetics, RQI Resuscitation Quality Improvement, and Media Partner HealthySimulation.com.
More About Laerdal Medical
Laerdal is one of the world’s premiere medical simulation and clinical education equipment vendors. Laerdal Medical was established in 1940 and began their mission to “Help Save Lives” in 1960 with the invention of the CPR training manikin called Resusci Anne. For over sixty years, Laerdal has provided the global healthcare simulation community with clinical task training and high fidelity manikin products ranging from the Laerdal pocket mask to the Laerdal SimMan 3G to MamaAnne. The company boasts more than 2000 employees in over 26 countries with as many as 50 international distributors. The Latest Laerdal related articles from HealthySimulation.com are listed below. Other major patient simulator manufacturers include CAE Healthcare and Gaumard. Laerdal Medical acquired B-Line Medical in 2019 and announced a partnership to distribute SimX virtual reality systems in 2023.
