Simulcast: A High Fidelity Podcast

Last week I highlighted the ICE blog and the KeyLIME podcast as high quality #meded FOAM resources that clinician educators need to know about. If simulation is in your educator’s toolkit – and it really should be if you’re serious about helping others learn – then hopefully you also know about Simulcast. This is a resource I would have given my right arm for when I was starting out in sim – OK, I admit, I am left-handed – but you get the point.

Simulcast is a podcast dedicated to simulation for clinicians. It is created by Jesse Spurr and Victoria Brazil, as well as “card carrying sim nerd” Ben Symon. The podcast includes interviews with experts in specific areas of simulation and debriefing, combined with insights from the Simulcast team’s perspective. These insights are particularly valuable as Jesse provides the point-of-view of a nurse heavily involved in simulation-based education and who has worked extensively in intensive care and emergency medicine. Victoria, on the other hand, is an Emergency Physician, as well as an academic educator with Professorial stripes and a strong proponent of the translational simulation concept. Thus both Vic and Jesse have interests in bringing simulation into the workplace, which makes it relevant to all of us clinicians at the coalface. The podcast also has a journal club, clearly a passion for Ben, which a great way to stay on top of key papers in the simulation literature and to gather insights into the critical appraisal of the simulation literature.

Here are some hot picks from the Simulcast ‘run sheet’ to whet your appetite:

• The Safe Container for Simulation – The Harvard Center for Medical Simulation’s debriefing course was no less than a life changing experience for me when I did it. Jenny Rudolph, who features in this podcast, is one of the key driving forces behind the Harvard Center for Medical Simulation. This conversation is about creating psychological safety for simulation participants. However, it’s relevance is much, much, much broader than that. Thinking about how we create and demonstrate psychological safety with our colleagues – whether teaching or working – is critical to how we can make everything better. If it didn’t do her a disservice, I’d call her the ‘Yoda’ of debriefing.
• Eppich Debriefing – The Simulcast team chat to Walter Eppich about debriefing. That should be enough to make you want to listen. One of Walter’s passions is the ‘learning conversation’ and, speaking from experience, you’ll never learn more than you do having a conversation with him. His, and Adam Cheng’s, PEARLS are brilliant. Walter is also Jedi-level when it comes to debriefing. ‘Nuff said.
• Put the Rubber to the Road – In Situ Simulation – My friend Andrew Petrosoniak does great in situ simulation work over in Canada. This is a great conversation on ‘how to make in situ sim’ happen. It nicely complements the recent EMA review by Andrew and his colleagues, as well as the SMACC workshops we have worked on together over the past few years.
• Live. Die. Repeat. Gamification of simulation training – I mentioned Daniel Cabrera and his enthusiasm for gaming in my post on the ICE blog last week. He pops up again, this time on Simulcast, with his colleague Kharmene Sunga. The Simulcast team interview them about their ‘Live, Die, Repeat’ concept of simulation-based education, which was partly inspired by the movie “Edge of Tomorrow”. Combining elements of gamification and deliberate practice, this is an exciting and challenging way to educate and learn. Who said the manikin should never die?
• The Trojan Horse of Simulation – even though I’m one of the SMACC organisers and was involved in many of the sessions, I still learnt a lot from Jesse and Vic’s discussion of how simulation had infiltrated many aspects of the dasSMACC conference. This was largely intentional, as the SMACC team are firm believers in the power of simulation-based education and the need to broaden its application in clinical settings. The simulation ‘Trojan horse’ (a ‘Rudolphism’, I believe) snuck its way into workshops, panels, and plenary talks in various ways and you can hear Jesse and Vic’s reactions to how it all went down.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I have been lucky to work with Jesse Spurr and Victoria Brazil on many projects over the past 5+ years – which gives me first-hand knowledge of their expertise – and I’m even luckier to count them as friends! Also, as already mentioned, I am one of the co-creators of the SMACC conference.