SIM lab - Do you like it?

I really enjoy my Sim experiences. Each Sim experience is the same patient, at three different times as they progress through the disease process. Our clinical group breaks in to teams of 2 or 3, we get report on the patient and then jump in. All the while, the rest of our group is watching the scenario play out from another room (the sim lab has multiple cameras and mikes around the room). At the end of each of the three segments, the team that was in the Sim comes back in to the observation room, and we all debrief together.

The Sim isn't about doing skills correctly (although, if anyone didn't follow all safety steps just as it was a patient because they're in Sim, they'd have a lot to answer for) it's a place for us to be in a situation that is generally just a couple steps past where we are clinically. Then to come back and talk about it. So, first the folks who were in the Sim talk about what decisions they think worked well, which they could have done differently and why, then the observers join in with what they may have done differently and why.

It's one of the few times, I fele we can kind of stop action, and talk about the "why's" of everything.

The other way I benefit from Sim is that since they push us just a bit further in Sim than we've been in clinicals. It's been a real confidence booster. At some point during each year, we have a benchmark simulation that we need to participate in. This is not with our clinical group, but is just us in the room (no classmates watching, just our clinical Prof and the Sim team). One of these sims had a CHF patient go into respiratory distress. To be absolutely truthful...at that point in my program, if that had happened to me in the hospital, my first action would have been to call for help! But, what I learned in that Sim is that I could at keep calm while working the problem (raise the HOB, put their O2 back on them, put the pulse ox back on them so I could see what was happening, listen to lungs, coach them to slow breathing, turn up the O2, etc) that were able to de-escalate the patient's anxiety and raise their sats.

Our sim team is fantastic though. They really work hard to introduce as much realism as possible. Additionally, while we do have a lot of whiz-bang, high tech manikins (one gives birth!) not all our Sim labs are with the high fidelity manikins. For one of our Psych rotation Sims, they hire a local actor to play a Schizophrenic adolescent. Other class members play his different family members as they go through this process of getting diagnosed and all it means. The actor was VERY good and it was a really beneficial experience.

Sorry, this got longer than I expected :)