Healthcare resources have been strained to previously unforeseeable limits as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. This has prompted the emergence of critical just-in-time COVID-19 education, including rapid simulation preparedness, evaluation and training across all healthcare sectors. Simulation has been proven to be pivotal for both healthcare provider learning and systems integration in the context of testing and integrating new processes, workflows, and rapid changes to practice (e.g., new cognitive aids, checklists, protocols) and changes to the delivery of clinical care. The individual, team, and systems learnings generated from proactive simulation training is occurring at unprecedented volume and speed in our healthcare system. Establishing a clear process to collect and report simulation outcomes has never been more important for staff and patient safety to reduce preventable harm. Our provincial simulation program in the province of Alberta, Canada (population = 4.37 million; geographic area = 661,848 km 2), has rapidly responded to this need by leading the intake, design, development, planning, and co-facilitation of over 400 acute care simulations across our province in both urban and rural Emergency Departments, Intensive Care Units, Operating Rooms, Labor and Delivery Units, Urgent Care Centers, Diagnostic Imaging and In-patient Units over a 5-week period to an estimated 30,000 learners of real frontline team members. Unfortunately, the speed at which the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged in Canada may prevent healthcare sectors in both urban and rural settings to have an opportunity for healthcare teams to participate in just-in-time in situ simulation-based learning prior to a potential surge of COVID-19 patients. Our coordinated approach and infrastructure have enabled organizational learnings and the ability to theme and categorize a mass volume of simulation outcome data, primarily from acute care settings to help all sectors further anticipate and plan. The goal of this paper is to share the unique features and advantages of using a centralized provincial simulation response team, preparedness using learning and systems integration methods, and to share the highest risk and highest frequency outcomes from analyzing a mass volume of COVID-19 simulation data across the largest health authority in Canada.

This is a PDF file of an article that has undergone enhancements after acceptance, such as the addition of a cover page and metadata, and formatting for readability, but it is not yet the definitive version of record. This version will undergo additional copyediting, typesetting and review before it is published in its final form, but we are providing this version to give early visibility of the article. Please note that, during the production process, errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

The COVID-19 pandemic motivated simulation educators to attempt various forms of distance simulation in order to maintain physical distancing and to rapidly deliver training and ensure systems preparedness. However, the perceived psychological safety in distance simulation remains largely unknown. A psychologically unsafe environment can negatively impact team dynamics and learning outcomes; therefore, it merits careful consideration with the adoption of any new learning modality. Between October 2020 and April 2021, 11 rural and remote hospitals in Alberta, Canada, were enrolled by convenience sampling in in-person-facilitated simulation (IPFS) (n = 82 participants) or remotely facilitated simulation (RFS) (n = 66 participants). Each interprofessional team was invited to attend two COVID-19-protected intubation simulation sessions. An There was no statistically significant difference between RFS and IPFS total scores on the Psychological safety can be established and maintained with RFS. Furthermore, in this study, RFS was shown to be comparable to IPFS in improving psychological safety among rural and remote interdisciplinary teams, providing simulation educators another modality for reaching any site or team.

Historically simulation-based education (SBE) has primarily focused on program development and delivery as a means for improving the effectiveness of team behaviours; however, these programs rarely embed formal evaluations of the programs themselves. Logic models can provide simulation programs with a systematic framework by which organizations and their evaluators can begin to understand complex interprofessional teams and their programs to determine inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes. By leveraging their use, organizational leaders of simulation programs can contribute to both