August 2020CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8IN MY Viewt is an exciting time in healthcare simulation. As the Medical Director for Simulation for the Heart Center at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford University and a part of the simulation community for over 14 years, I have witnessed an evolution in simulation's impact on healthcare. What started as a form of education targeted to students and trainees has evolved into an essential component of patient safety. My first encounter with simulation was during my training to become a pediatric cardiac intensive care physician which is my clinical role at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. I take care of children who are either born with or acquire heart disease when those children need intensive care therapies such as a breathing tube, a mechanical heart or continuous intravenous medications to keep their hearts pumping well. My training in cardiovascular intensive care included "mock codes" where the mannequins were my patients in a manufactured distress and we would be asked to "suspend disbelief" so we could immerse ourselves into the clinical scenario. Technology has increased the fidelity of such mannequins so the immersion can be immediate and automatic. Some simulation rooms are designed to be exact replicas of existing clinical space. Other times, the clinical spaces as used for "in-situ" simulations.The attraction and fascination with the technology is understandable. As the mannequins become more lifelike, the tendency is to focus on simulation as a technology but that would be a mistake. Simulation labs are, in fact, labs of human behavior and cognition-- a place where we as healthcare educators, patient safety experts and anyone interested in how patient care is delivered can observe the behaviors and the cognitive processes of healthcare professionals. The field of human factors and ergonomics describe the gap between how work is imagined by administrators to how work is Simulation: A Lab of Human Behavior and Cognition ILILLIAN SU, MD, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
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