Quality and Simulation Professionals Should Collaborate.

Simulation is underutilized as a tool to improve healthcare quality and safety despite many examples of its effectiveness to identify and remedy quality and safety problems, improve teamwork, and improve various measures of quality and safety that are important to healthcare organizations, eg, patient safety indicators. We urge quality and safety and simulation professionals to collaborate with their counterparts in their organizations to employ simulation in ways that improve the quality and safety of care of their patients. These collaborations could begin through initiating conversations among the quality and safety and simulation professionals, perhaps using this article as a prompt for discussion, identifying one area in need of quality and safety improvement for which simulation can be helpful, and beginning that work.

Call to Action: Quality and Simulation Professionals Should Collaborate.

Simulation is underutilized as a tool to improve healthcare quality and safety despite many examples of its effectiveness to identify and remedy quality and safety problems, improve teamwork, and improve various measures of quality and safety that are important to healthcare organizations, eg, patient safety indicators. We urge quality and safety and simulation professionals to collaborate with their counterparts in their organizations to employ simulation in ways that improve the quality and safety of care of their patients. These collaborations could begin through initiating conversations among the quality and safety and simulation professionals, perhaps using this article as a prompt for discussion, identifying one area in need of quality and safety improvement for which simulation can be helpful, and beginning that work.

Applying holistic review practices to a Combined Baccalaureate/Medical Degree Program: Reflections on lessons learned.

Problem: Despite the implementation of holistic review in the medical school application process, there is little information about how this can be utilized in Combined Baccalaureate/Medical Degree pipeline programs, especially since many programs offer reserved spots to their students in the medical school. Implementing holistic review in a Combined Baccalaureate/Medical Degree program and intentionally structuring it to align with the medical school mission and admissions practices and processes, can improve the diversification of the physician workforce, contribute to more primary care doctors, and promote in-state practice.

Intervention: Utilizing the medical school admissions by-laws, committee structure, shared training, and educational processes, we successfully engrained in our committee members the values and mission alignment to select the best applicants to fulfill the medical school mission using holistic review.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on American College of Surgeons-Accredited Education Institutes & American Society of Anesthesiologists-Simulation Education Network: Opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges for simulation programs including American College of Surgeons Accredited Education Institutes and American Society of Anesthesiologists Simulation Education Network. American College of Surgeons Accredited Education Institutes and American Society of Anesthesiologists Simulation Education Network leadership were surveyed to identify opportunities to enhance patient safety through simulation.

Methods: Between January and June 2021, surveys consisting of 3 targeted domains: (I) Changing practice; (II) Contributions and recognition; and (III) Moving ahead were distributed to 100 American College of Surgeons Accredited Education Institutes and 54 American Society of Anesthesiologists Simulation Education Network centers.

Teaching Effective Informed Consent Communication Skills in the Virtual Surgical Clerkship.

Background: The disruption by the COVID-19 pandemic on undergraduate medical education allowed for assessment of virtual curricular innovations. One of the difficulties encountered in the virtual curriculum is the teaching of clinical competencies that would traditionally require students to undergo in-person simulations and patient encounters. We implemented a novel informed consent activity module, with standardized patients, to improve self-efficacy in communication within our core surgery clerkship.

Adapting Simulation Curricula to the Future Needs of Anesthesiology.

We have discussed some examples of the types of program development strategies that are in common use and have presented examples of the type of performance gaps that can occur when a coordinated curriculum development process is not applied (or is applied in an uncoordinated fashion). We have outlined one method to develop a simulation-based curriculum focusing more on ways to identify how to "simulate what is needed" rather than using the "simulate what we know" style. We believe that curricula must be designed to continually evolve rather being conceived as a single finished program.

Physician communication in the operating room.

In this study, communication research was conducted with multidisciplinary groups of operating-room physicians. Theoretical frameworks from intercultural communication and rhetoric were used to (a) measure latent cultural communication variables and (b) conduct communication training with the physicians. A six-step protocol guided the research with teams of physicians from different surgical specialties: anesthesiologists, general surgeons, and obstetrician-gynecologists (n = 85).

Cause or effect? The relationship between student perception of the medical school learning environment and academic performance on USMLE Step 1.

Background: A school's learning environment is believed to influence academic performance yet few studies have evaluated this association controlling for prior academic ability, an important factor since students who do well in school tend to rate their school's environment more highly than students who are less academically strong.

Aim: To evaluate the effect of student perception of the learning environment on their performance on a standardized licensing test while controlling for prior academic ability.

Methods: We measured perception of the learning environment after the first year of medical school in 267 students from five consecutive classes and related that measure to performance on United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1, taken approximately six months later.

Improved climate, culture, and communication through multidisciplinary training and instruction.

Objective: The objective of the study was to determine the effectiveness of multidisciplinary team training on organizational culture and team communication.

Study Design: The training included a 6-step protocol: (1) a pretest survey assessing cultural attitudes and perceptions, (2) a baseline high-fidelity simulation session, (3) invitational medical rhetoric instruction, (4) a second high-fidelity simulation session, (5) a posttest survey assessing changed cultural attitudes and perceptions, and (6) a debriefing with participants. Teams of 4 physicians trained together: 2 obstetricians and 2 anesthesiologists.