Telesimulation‐based education during COVID‐19

Abstract

Simulation is a valuable, immersive educational tool for both health professional trainees and experienced clinicians. By promoting a realistic, collaborative, safe, hands‐on, learning environment, simulation allows interprofessional teams to come together and practise both routine and high stakes, low‐frequency events. The COVID‐19 pandemic and the need for social distancing have shifted traditional simulation‐based medical education towards a virtual platform: telesimulation. Telesimulation is an evolving field and the speed at which clinical educators need to adapt to use this platform is unprecedented. Educators must quickly navigate and leverage the differences between traditional simulation and telesimulation to create robust remote educational experiences. Telesimulation has unique goals and objectives, technology needs, and participant roles that need to be understood and properly operationalized to maximize opportunities for learning. This article reviews the authors’ recommendations for developing and delivering successful telesimulations.

Opinion of students on online education during the COVID ‐19 pandemic

“…Additionally, professors are taking help of virtual laboratories to teach science courses (Ray & Srivastava, 2020). Virtual laboratories allow students to simulate experiments related to their courses online (Diaz & Walsh, 2020; Vasiliadou, 2020). Such tools were being used for simulation and data visualization for many years (Jain, Chakraborty, & Chakraverty, 2018), but their use have now become widespread.…”

Virtual Resident Mentorship Groups for Fourth Year Medical Students Applying into Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery

“…19,20 Such innovations have included national consortia to deliver high-quality faculty lectures, real-time streaming of surgeries, opening access to student attendance at virtual tumor boards and other didactics, interactive discussions with faculty and residents, telesimulation, self-paced curricula, and virtual electives. 12,19,[21][22][23][24] Our program demonstrates how virtual spaces can provide infrastructure for near-peer mentorship that accomplishes objectives of didactic teaching, facilitate resident-student networking, and enables applicants to meet one another, all goals of traditional visiting subinternships built into accreditation standards for both medical students and residents. 4,5 The transition to residency represents a unique opportunity to provide these types of programs, which may strengthen the student experience both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Telesimulation for remote simulation and assessment

“…With restrictions implemented to encourage social distancing, many training programs have shifted in‐person teaching sessions to online delivery formats 24 . Continuing simulation‐based education posed a particular challenge, given the usual requirements for trainees to gather in a simulation center to practice on mannequins or other physical models 25,26 . There have been several creative TS programs developed in response to this problem.…”

“…Implementing a successful TS program is enabled by approaching the project with a plan for each step of the operation. Diaz and Walsh describe eight important considerations in developing and delivering a TS program 25 . These are summarized in Table 1.…”