There is no doubt that simulation training is valuable. But our exposure as rural doctors is usually limited to either occasional entry-level courses like APLS/EMST/ELS …. or perhaps on a dedicated course like EMAC … or even as part of an organised upskilling event organised by one of the Rural Doctor’s organisations (for example the NSW Rural Doctors Network biennial anaesthetic upskilling includes a day in the sim lab at Royal North Shore)
Suffice it to say then, access to sim is constrained by geography. Or is it?
The BEST sim takes place in your own location, using the equipment you are familiar with and with ‘buy in’ from staff – after all, it is the clinical team that we are trying to improve, not the individual doctor.
In recent years, affordable solutions such as SimMon and iSimulate / ALSi have become available – which offer the potential of delivering high-fidelity, low cost sim in rural hospitals.
This is exciting. Have a listen to Dr Anthony Lewis from iSimulate explain more :
As well as good sim tools, sim training needs structured cases and debrief. iSimulate allows cases to be stored and shared. Auckland HEMS have kindly allowed a link to their prehospital sim cases. For effective debrief, have a look at this video from Academic Emergency Medicine
<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/33991081″>High Fidelity Cased Based Simulation Debriefing</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/aem”>Academic Emergency Medicine</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
