An Innovative Approach to Collaborative Simulation Training on Teamwork Skills for Pediatric Residents and Nursing Students

Abstract

To the editor,We wish to submit our brief findings on the use of collaborative simulation training to enhance teamwork skills of pediatric residents and nursing students.Physicians and nurses are commonly educated independently but are expected to demonstrate teamwork skills in professional practice. Nursing, medical, and other healthcare organizations have called for a movement away from educating medical and nursing students in isolated academic environments. 1 This is because a lack of interprofessional collaboration and communication is cited as one cause for medical errors that results in poor patient outcomes. 2 The literature suggests that collaboration between physicians and nurses can be linked to decreases in morbidity and mortality, reduced healthcare costs, and medical errors. 3 Additionally, several studies have shown that interdisciplinary education increases patient satisfaction. 4 5 Education with mixed-modality simulation can prepare nursing students and resident physicians for collaborative professional practice. [6][7][8] In general, and historically, there often is a lack of effective teaching strategies for interprofessional education in medical schools and nursing schools. The proposed new accreditation standards from Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) recommend that the core curriculum of a medical education program must prepare medical students to function collaboratively on healthcare teams that include other health professionals. Members of the healthcare teams from other health professions may be either students or practitioners. 9 We hypothesized that mixed-modality high-fidelity simulation (HFS) with critical event scenarios and the use of a standardized participant (SP) as parent/ guardian coupled with a standardized