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Channel: communication – HealthySimulation.com

SIMmersion Provides PC-Based Simulated Communication Training

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Looking for controlled communication based training outside of a Standardized Patient Program? Consider SIMmersion, a computer-based simulation platform providing healthcare communication training opportunities.

Textbooks, e-learning systems, and classroom lectures present content in a rigid structure, and can make it difficult for students to focus on the knowledge they consider relevant. SIMmersion systems let players navigate freely through educational materials to zero in on what matters most to them. Their convenient training portal lets players access our systems online whenever and wherever they want. This flexible approach to learning puts students in control of their own education.

"SIMmersion simulation training users found it easy to use, enjoyed the experience, and thought it realistic and helpful. Almost all described the interview as anxiety provoking but said that the anxiety diminished as they became more skilled. They saw the benefit of its special features such as the Coach and the transcript, and they believed that they could learn the skills being taught through these methods."
-Morris Bell, Ph.D. Yale University School of Medicine.

SIMmersion Domains Include:

  • Military: Activate and reinforce difficult interpersonal skills through engaging virtual role-plays with high replay value. Realistic conversations provide the same training experience to players anywhere in the world at any time in a platform-agnostic format.
  • Healthcare: Realistic healthcare conversations can help practitioners prepare for important conversations with patients and build skills in a consequence-free virtual environment.
  • Legal & Law Enforcement: SIMmersion Training systems help law enforcement and legal personnel refine the approach they need for success, without the high stakes of having real cases on the line.
  • Business & Management: Helps people at any level in an organization build skills in the important workplace interactions that matter most to their jobs.
  • Education & Social: Unique training systems can help players in education and social services walk their way through important conversations in a risk-free virtual setting, so they’re ready for success in the real situation.

Whether helping people with autism practice social skills, giving doctors realistic experience conducting brief interventions, or coaching those with mental illness in how to excel on job interviews, SIMmersion systems can make a difference in the lives of people across the healthcare system.

Learn more on the SIMmersion website today!


JEMS: Using Medical Simulation to Teach Effective Communication in EMS

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Over on JEMS (Journal of Emergency Medical Services), a recent article by By Jennifer McCarthy, MAS, NRP, MICP, Amar P. Patel, DHSc, MS, NRP, Andrew E. Spain, MA, NCEE, EMT-P, and Timothy Whitaker, BS, CHSE, CHSOS, EMT-P focused on how EMS faculty can utilize healthcare simulation to effectively teach communication.

JEMS Excerpt:

EMS educators often think of simulation as a tool used for enhancing patient assessment techniques, teaching skills before performing them on actual patients (e.g., IVs or airways), or performing patient care simulation experiences (i.e., full scenarios). These are easy ways to enhance what's taught in the classroom and are great examples of education that can be bridged into practice. How often are communication concepts considered and deliberately integrated into a patient assessment or skills activity? And how often do they become the sole focus of the simulation activity?

There's little doubt that communication is an important skill for healthcare providers, either between the caregiver and the patient or caregiver to caregiver, yet it's often minimal or performed poorly. Poor communication and patient handoff has been identified as a contributing cause of medical errors. How healthcare providers communicate with each other and to their patients is as important as what they're communicating.

Consideration must be given when designing and delivering simulation activities for including, evaluating and enhancing communication. The considerations for inclusion can be construed in two frameworks: meta objectives and specific objectives.

Incorporating communication and utilizing various communication techniques/tools in a simulation activity can help prepare providers with the necessary skills to improve communication between patients, their families and EMS providers. Poor behaviors can be identified and corrected before they affect a patient or their family. Good communication behaviors can be embedded and strengthened, supporting a culture of communication and care that serves to minimize errors and support our patients and providers safety.

Read the full JEMS Simulation Article here!

Communication RX: Transforming Healthcare Through Relationships from ACH

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How important is simulation to communications based training in professional healthcare? A new book by the Academy of Communication in Healthcare provides training and resources on "Communication Rx: Relationship-Centered Communication". ACH is the professional home for all those who are committed to improving communication and relationships in healthcare which envisions a health care system where all patients, healthcare professionals, trainees and researchers feel valued, are treated equitably with respect, compassion, understanding, and are actively engaged in healthcare processes and decisions. Although the book is primarily designed for patient communication, the tools can also be utilized for provider to provider communication. The tips don't just improve communication, they also improve efficiency and reduce errors -- perfectly aligned with the ideas behind simulation! Learn more at the ACH website.

Research shows that nothing impacts patient experiences more than the quality of communication. While beneficial, the latest in cutting-edge technology and techniques aren’t enough to ensure the best possible care for patients. The key to better healthcare outcomes is communication. Over the past four decades, The Academy of Communication in Healthcare (ACH) has worked tirelessly with health systems, teaching communication skills that put relationships―between patients and providers, as well as among providers―at the center of care.

Now, for the first time, ACH’s proven and effective methodology is detailed in this invaluable step-by-step guide. You’ll learn communication skills that will enable you to: In this practical―and potentially life-saving―volume, you’ll discover special sections on teamwork, coaching, shared decision-making, feedback, conflict engagement, diversity, and communicating through hierarchy. The book also provides institutional initiatives to help you implement change in your organization and outlines a field-tested blueprint for healthier communication across the entire industry.  All royalties benefit the mission of ACH.

“An engaging and evidence-based book on the necessity of communication in healthcare to reduce the epidemic of suffering, this guide to improving healthcare communication is a must-read for caregivers who want to make a difference in the lives of the patients they serve.” —Christina Dempsey MSN, MBA, CNOR, CENP, FAAN, SVP, Chief Nursing Officer, Press Ganey Associates, Inc., and author of The Antidote to Suffering

Get the book now from Amazon:

Academy of Communication in Healthcare (ACH) Updates 2018 Opportunities

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The Academy of Communication in Healthcare, or ACH, has been offering research and training for almost 40 years, focusing on ways to improve patient safety, interdisciplinary teamwork, patient satisfaction scores, and developing individual communication skills. Below are a list of updates from the group covering some of their 2018 activities including abstract submission deadlines for their annual ENRICH conference, upcoming webinars, recorded podcasts, and recent articles. The group provides a resource for everyone involved in healthcare, from students to surgeons and patients themselves.

Call for Abstract Submissions Extended Submission Deadline: Monday, February 5th at 5pm ET/2pm PT for ENRICH Healthcare Communication Course & Research Forum - May 31st - June 3rd, 2018

ACH will host its co-located ENRICH Communication Course and Research Forum at the Hilton Downtown in Tampa, FL. These programs bring together 200+ healthcare professionals to engage in intensive communication training and to hear the latest research and teaching methods in the field. The ENRICH course and the Research Forum are two separate programs (see descriptions for each). Prospective authors are welcome to submit abstracts and proposals through our electronic submission process. We encourage submissions from educators, researchers and learners from all healthcare fields. Please click here for detailed guidelines and selection criteria for scientific abstracts, workshops, symposia, and special interest group submissions.

ACH Webinars: The Use of Role Play to Teach Communication Skills to Physicians: Wednesday, February 21, 2018 at 12:30pm ET/ 9:30am PT ; Presenter: R. Ellen Pearlman, MD, FACH. The goal of this webinar is to review the utility of role play in teaching adult learners new communication skills, and the steps required to facilitate role plays successfully. By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to describe:

  • Why role play is a useful strategy for adult learners learning new communication skills,
  • Two important guiding principles for facilitating role play,
  • The basic steps required to set up, run, and
  • Debrief a role play, and other useful forums for practicing communication skills.

Podcast: Healthcare Communication: Effective Techniques for Clinicians: DocCom, an online communication skills curriculum, has launched a podcast series titled "Healthcare Communication: Effective Techniques for Clinicians". Leading communication experts in the healthcare industry are interviewed on popular communication topics. Sign up on your favorite platform, such as iTunes or Stitcher.

Disclosure and Apology after Medical Errors and Adverse Events: A Live Interactive Online Workshop -- Tuesday, February 13, 2018: Speaking with patients or their families after a medical error or an adverse medical event is one of the most difficult conversations a clinician can have. Yet most clinicians have little or no training in how to prepare for and conduct these conversations. The Institute for Professionalism and Ethical Practice at Boston Children's Hospital's Disclosure and Apology Live Interactive Online Workshop offers providers the tools, skills, and practice needed to conduct these difficult but necessary conversations with confidence and compassion. Participants can interact with the workshop leaders and other participants, enhancing the workshop experience.

Article: "The role of emotion in clinical decision making: an integrative literature review" -- "Background: Traditionally, clinical decision making has been perceived as a purely rational and cognitive process. Recently, a number of authors have linked emotional intelligence (EI) to clinical decision making (CDM) and calls have been made for an increased focus on EI skills for clinicians. The objective of this integrative literature review was to identify and synthesize the empirical evidence for a role of emotion in CDM...".

Learn more on the ACH website today!

How To Enhance Simulation Team Communication Through Slack

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As Healthcare Simulation Education becomes more ubiquitous, it requires larger, more diverse teams to design and implement these programs. Adding elements of Interprofessional and Interdisciplinary Education increases the breadth and depth of personnel required to deliver a high-quality curriculum. Teams may span shifts, locations, and possibly even different organizations. Coordination of these disparate groups of people often leads to multiple threads of communication crossing different methods, enormous email chains that are often hard to follow and wander from topic to topic, and an inability to efficiently keep track of what was said, decisions that were made, and what outcomes occurred. The application Slack has some options to help mitigate this. Interprofessional and inter-disciplinary teams add layers and layers to communication and teamwork. Slack is a tool that can help streamline your electronic communication, and today Matthew Charnetski, MSMS, NRP, Director of Simulation Learning at NYIT at Arkansas State University and Adjunct Faculty at Drexel University, shows us why and how!

What is Slack?

Imagine if Internet Relay Chat (go waaay back), Twitter, and Skype had a baby. Slack allows streamlined communication, documentation over time, with clear and concise threads tying it all together. All in one location and interface. This hub for communication can be accessed from applications on your computer, smartphone, tablet, and the internet. One can text, call, video chat, share screens, search through old messages, and share files all from the same place. Some features or level of features must be purchased, but most functionality is free!  Read on for 4 Steps/Tips for using Slack and a use scenario for Slack in a Healthcare Simulation Program.

How To Slack

  1. Create an account and a workspace

A workspace can be department-wide, project based, or however else one wishes to divide up access and communication. Setting up a workspace is the first thing that is done when signing up for Slack. Slack can support multiple workspaces in case a user is working with several different departments, organizations, or on different projects. Again, all depending on how the workflow is divided up. For instance, Healthy Simulation Experiment is now a workspace that one can join.

  1. Create a Project or “Channel”

Once a workspace is created, the user will be asked to create channels for further organization. Channels are governed by the use of hashtags to signify different channels and ways to divide up different topics. In this instance #blog-posts, #general, and #random are the initial threads. Users and administrators may add more channels as they become necessary to help designate different topics, projects, or any other threads that need to be tracked by the team.

Suggestions for channels? Project channels #COM-Year1-GI-Lab, #PA-Year2-OSCE-Stations, #COM-Year3-PE-Prep for instance. Add some channels that allow for keeping track of essential elements such as #Program-Evaluation, #Accreditation, #EPAs, #Process-Improvement, or #Needs-Documentation. Put some thought in to how to organize these channels. While it is easy to add channels later, historical data will be better with strong channel and hashtag naming conventions.

  1. Invite Collaborators

During creation of a workspace, collaborators may be invited. Slack also allows for a simple way to add collaborators through the menu in the top left of the main screen. Users may have different levels of access and for channels to be listed as private or public. Users can join public channels but must be invited to private channels. An administrator for a workspace can invite specific users by email to join a workspace or can share a url to allow access to the workspace. In this example, there are two users that are collaborating, charnets and M2. These users can participate in all of the channels that are available and can directly message one another.

Within the channels that have been created, any collaborator can be addressed directly or specifically called out by using @username. For this example, @charnets or @M2.

  1. And then?

This post only begins to scratch the surface of how one might use Slack to improve communication. Slack allows for recording conversations and threads relevant to a specific project. Files can be shared and uploaded directly to shared drives on Dropbox or Google. Video chats can be conducted for meetings with collaborators who are not geographically available. In the end, the only limits on how one might use Slack are limited by their creativity and adaptability to use this tool to meet their needs.

A Use-Case for Simulation Teams

A new project is requested by faculty for an Interprofessional, In-Situ, simulation program in a local hospital. The Healthcare Simulation Team is housed at a local university not directly affiliated with the hospital requesting the program.

University Simulation Center has a Slack Workspace for their program. Channels exist for daily operations and communication with their in-house team and IT. After receiving this request, the Director of Simulation reaches out to the Healthcare Simulation Coordinator who is responsible for orchestrating the logistics, curriculum design, assessment, and evaluation of the requested program.

The Simulation Coordinator creates a Slack channel called #IPE-Hospital and invites the Healthcare Simulation Specialist, Healthcare Simulation Technician, representative from IT, and the Clinical Faculty from the Hospital to join. The Coordinator is able to direct activities for the event while also sharing documentation for the creation and operation of the simulation.

During the process, the Faculty have a question about the center’s capabilities related to central line maintenance. The Coordinator tags the question with #capability and sends a direct message to @Specialist and @Tech to ensure they weigh in.

It’s a busy day in University Simulation Center, the Specialist and Technician are not able to check in on the conversation until much later in the afternoon. In the meantime, the conversation continues, and the question disappears into the volume of text that has occurred. Fortunately, the Slack notifies them that they have a direct message and draws their attention to the question which they answer in a timely fashion.

The use of a standard naming convention for categories of questions allows searching for topics and questions, ensuring answers have been delivered.

Though the Faculty are currently working the night shift, they are able to circle back to their question with the search function and find the response. This allows them to continue working on their part of the curriculum design despite being geographically separate from the Simulation Team and working on a completely different shift.

The process continues and the Coordinator calls a meeting with the Specialist, Technician, Faculty, and IT to finalize specifics for the event. Tagging these messages with #1st-logistics-mtg allows for isolation of the conversation about the meeting amidst all of the other conversation. Without Slack, there would have been several phone calls and voice messages and a series of emails back and forth to look through to determine a meeting time. In Slack, the back and forth is limited to the channel and can be seen in one place more like a conversation than an email thread.

Unfortunately, the Faculty are unable to come to the center. The Coordinator schedules a video chat and they each join through Slack. Sharing her screen, everyone in the conference is able to see the same information while the Coordinator takes notes in a Google Doc through Slack, with no additional effort the notes are in both Google Drive and Slack.

The following day, the Director needs to know the status of external programs unexpectedly. The Director is able to open Slack to get a general sense of where things are in the process including the fact that there was a meeting yesterday and what the results of that meeting were.

The event comes and goes as smoothly as possible. During the post-event debrief, notes are taken in Slack, putting them in the channel and on Google in one step. Some issues were solved, but others will require more thought and planning to resolve.

One issue was confusion on who needed to provide labs and images. Clinical Faculty thought the center had a large repository. Center staff thought it would come from clinicians or subject matter experts. The Simulation Coordinator creates an additional channel called #Labs-and-Images for a discussion about what tools are available and how best to coordinate the gathering of this information for future events.

After the event, the Director exports the channel and adds the file to the appropriate Google Drive folder. Using Slack, the conversation is recorded and can be placed with other relevant pieces of documentation. If the same faculty return, other faculty wish to do something similar, or programming information is required for accreditation of the center/program/school/hospital, the documentation is readily available in one convenient location.

Conclusion

As with any piece of new technology or application, Slack takes a little getting used to. Walk through the steps above, think about how to structure the communication with some wiggle room for adaptation in the future, and start gently. Slack is as simple as using any messaging app with the addition of powerful functions that allow for the collaboration of Healthcare Simulation Teams for Curriculum Design, Program Evaluation, and Operational Needs.

Learn More About How To Enhance Simulation Team Communication Through Slack!


Today's article was guest authored by Matthew Charnetski, MSMS, NRP, Director of Simulation Learning at NYIT at Arkansas State University and Adjunct Faculty at Drexel University. The last 20-ish years have been a strange whirlwind from Iowa to Antarctica, Kazakhstan to Arkansas of Wilderness and Critical Care Paramedicine, Information Technologies Support, and Healthcare Simulation Operations and Curriculum Design.

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