Faculty Development

Policy agendas from government and professional bodies endorse, promote and fund patient simulation on a widespread scale (Donaldson,). As well as helping to ensure patient safety and reduce error, simulation is also seen as an alternative means of learners acquiring clinical skills without spending time in an increasingly over-crowded clinical environment (Nursing and Midwifery Council, 2007). Educators must therefore be attentive to such agendas and ensure that simulation is complementary to learning in the clinical workplace and that learning in each context is relevant to achieving defined outcomes and developing safe, competent practitioners. It is likely that simulation will become more integrated into curricula and embedded into education and training programmes. 

Opportunities for more interprofessional learning around non-technical skills and teamworking are likely to increase as more centres offer such learning opportunities although more evidence is required as to the efficacy of such training.  Simulation has also been used to support new ways of working (McKimm, 2006). As health and social services change towards more integrated, patient led approaches, we may see more use of simulation to support their introduction.

The biggest restraints to simulation training are cost and access. There are only a handful of centres across the country that can provide immersive high-fidelity simulations, the ‘real’ experience in mock clinical areas with all the appropriate equipment, manikins and faculty. One group has tried to address these issues by identifying the key aspects of the theatre environment that are needed for learning and then replicating these in a portable environment that can be set up in a short space of time and a small area. This ability has been coined ‘distributed simulation’ (Kneebone et al, 2010), where inflatable, portable theatres can be erected in places of work and simulations can be run. In addition to providing more easily accessible training, this kind of technology is much cheaper. This increasing emphasis on the ability to bring the simulation to the learner has also been replicated by other initiatives, ‘man in a van’ ‘Simvan’, where the equipment is mobile and taken to the learner and the simulation occurs in the van.  However, both of these innovative developments still need trained faculty and a peripatetic educator, to travel with the equipment.

Technological changes will also lead to much more integrated multimedia simulations such as the use of hand held devices, portable simulators and further development of virtual reality simulators.