Institution

The use of simulation in healthcare education connects conventional classroom learning to a real-life clinical experience. The primary purpose of healthcare simulation is the reduction of avoidable medical errors associated with human factors. Performed in a safe learning environment, healthcare simulation can range from practicing relatively simple technical skills such as performing injections to more elaborate and complex skills such as cardiac catheterization. Simulation can also focus on improving one’s non-technical skills such as decision making, leadership, effective team work, and communication skills.

Over the last four decades, Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) has become the gold standard for the assessment of clinical competence. More than 1,000 research papers have been published on the OSCE and considerable knowledge has been gained as to the learning outcomes that can be assessed.

Standardized Patients (SPs), actors that are trained specifically to perform a standardized script of a physician-patient interaction, and OSCE take an increasing part of contemporary health professions education across all disciplines and across the continuum of healthcare education. They are key educational tools for both high-quality teaching and the evaluation of clinical skills. Partial task trainers and mannequins also play an integral part in healthcare simulation and education.  Task trainers allow repeated practice of individual skills ensuring development of confidence and competency. Mannequin based training places participants in a realistic clinical or non-clinical setting with a mannequin and enables them to learn from predetermined scenarios. Lessons learned from mannequin based simulation are key to improving the healthcare environment and the delivery of care to patients in the future.