By Victoria Brazil (@SocraticEM); Gabe Reedy (@gabereedy); Serkan Toy; Michelle Michelle Kelly (@KellyKelmich)
Staying up to date with healthcare simulation literature is a challenge. Which articles should change our practice? How do we find them?
Last year on the ICE blog we highlighted the annual Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) initiative – selecting ‘Articles of Influence’ from the four main simulation journals – Simulation in Healthcare, Clinical Simulation in Nursing, Advances in Simulation and BMJ Simulation and Technology Enhanced Learning. We now showcase the 2021 list.
The list is presented at the annual International Meeting for Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH), held virtually this year. The papers are also added to the SSH Simulation Scholarship Knowledge map.
So how are the articles chosen? Society members express interest in reviewing articles, with coordination and oversight from members of the SSH Research Committee (including GR, ST and MK, co-authors of this post). This year, 198 nominated articles were reviewed by a team of 36 reviewers and rated them for the influence on their own or their colleagues’ simulation practice using a 5-point scale. It’s not a ‘ranking’. Published research, reviews and conceptual articles were all eligible for nomination.
The full list (July 2019 – June 2020) is here – https://www.ssih.org/Portals/48/AOI_2019-20.pdf
Some highlights from this year’s list:
COVID and simulation – no surprise – descriptions of lessons learned from using simulation to prepare health care systems for the pandemic, the rise of virtual simulation, and preparing nurse practitioner students for virtual visits.
A focus on healthcare systems and process improvement through simulation testing – testing new physical facilities, using sim to improve healthcare management and policy, system-thinking simulations for adverse event reporting, and improving the quality of evaluation data in simulation-based healthcare improvement projects. An article demonstrating improved patient outcomes in facilities that conduct in situ simulations was one of my favourites.
Devices and procedural simulation – low cost simulators for intussusception air enema reduction, for peripheral IV cannula device design and for bronchoscopy-guided percutaneous dilatational tracheostomy.
And papers with a pedagogical focus – debriefing using a timeline tool, integrating simulation into educational curricula, and an article suggesting that observers have equivalent learning outcomes to simulation participants.
There is plenty of excellent simulation literature out there, and the 22 ‘Articles of Influence’ are a great start for keeping up to date.
Happy reading!
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