Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ever seeing the control area or meeting the simula-
tion professionals, although a walk-through before
or after the exercise may help them understand
the degree of support entailed to produce their
experience.
The pre-brief/de-brief room is usually near the
stage, and is used to gather together all students
before and after their simulation experience. Any
conference room of appropriate size and typical
teaching aids (white boards, video displays and
projectors, etc) will suffice.
experiences tailored to the specific needs of the
participants. These examples could be produced
separately as three independent exercises but are
even more effective when exercised together as
part of the response to a single defined incident.
Note that in each example the entire essence of the
simulation is captured within a single sentence that
defines who, where, and what:
1. A few clinical students in their emergency
department perform hands-on treatment of bio-
intoxicated patients;
2. Many non-clinical students in their Emer-
gency Operations Command Center allocate
resources during a bio-contaminant outbreak
in their Treatment Facility;
3. Many clinical and non-clinical students just
outside their treatment facility perform crowd
control, decontamination, and triage of crowds
demanding help.
21.5 Scenario Creation
Use the following series of questions and answers
as a framework to construct an effective scenario.
Start with answering the following questions:
Who are your students and how many are there?
What are their current competencies?
What are your teaching objectives?
How do you want your students changed by their
simulation experiences?
In the first scenario, the world of the simulation
is limited to just a few beds within the simu-
lated emergency department (ED). For this kind
of simulation to be an effective learning expe-
rience, the patients, both the humans on stage
and the humans controlling the robots from off
stage, must present themselves very realistically.
The “audience members” that they are trying
to convince are learning to be bio-agent experts
through their responses to the realistic presenta-
tions of the patients, so the patients must be thor-
oughly competent in the content and the expression
of the content.
The number of students is limited to how many
clinicians usually contribute in treating one ED
patient times the number of simultaneously simu-
lated ED patients. Thus, the population of the entire
ED along with all the ED augmenters will not all
“fit” into this kind of simulation all at one time.
However, given the nature of ED work, work-
loads, staffing and the relative short duration of
the scenario, this simulation could be offered regu-
larly, with small subsets of the student popula-
tion assigned to “staff” the simulated ED. Given
the numerous re-certification requirements of ED
clinicians (ACLS, ATLS, etc.), perhaps a rotating
The answers to the above questions will suggest
answers to the following questions:
What is the setting of the scenario?
Where are the students' developing competencies
to be employed?
Where is the simulation scenario to be staged?
Who are all the various players?
What roles do your students play?
What roles do your actors and, if needed, robotic
characters play
What are the script elements that are
essential
to
satisfy all the above?
What are the script elements that are
desirable
to
augment all the above?
What are the script elements that are
non-essential
and that may confound all the above?
What resources are required to produce the
scenario?
21.6 Scenario Examples
The three following examples illustrate the prin-
ciples and tools of simulation applied as learning
