Simulation
Simulation is an area of importance both within the CETL4HealthNE and nationally. As part of the CETL4HealthNE a scoping exercise was commissioned that was carried out on behalf of the CETL4HealthNE and NHS North East. One of the aims of the scoping exercise was to formulate a definition of simulation. From the scoping exercise the definition that emerged was:
“Clinical simulation may be defined as the recreation or replication of a clinical setting for the purpose of clinical training. The clinical setting may be recreated or achieved by the use of a variety of methods and resources including manikins, part-task trainers, actors or patients within role-play or scenario based teaching.”
The CETL4HealthNE is involved in a national group HSERG (Healthcare Simulation Education Research Group). In 2007, a number of representatives from Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning with an interest in clinical simulation decided that they should explore opportunities for enhancing their individual impacts through collaboration. The original members represented CETLs at Queens University, Belfast, the University of Portsmouth, St Bartholomews and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Newcastle. After an initial meeting to discuss areas of common interest, the group agreed that there was a need for a wider organisation which was focused on research into teaching and training using clinical simulation. The group recognised that there was a number of national priorities which were impacting on the use and adoption of clinical simulation as a means for facilitating learning including the European working time directive, shorter patient stays, increased patient safety, pressure on placements and modernising medical careers to name a few. It was also felt that current clinical simulation networks were focused more on the “doing” than on the research and that the group could offer something to the wider community by facilitating a network which focuses on robust research into the educational effectiveness of clinical simulation.
