Session Design Submission Review

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Rapid Virtual Simulations (RVS) (Blanchard & Wiseman 2024) are technology-supported interactive learning experiences that are quick to create, deploy and modify and are repeatable, scalable and space and time-independent. Based upon Simon’s theory of “satisficing” these tools aim to provide learning impacts that are “good enough” rather than “perfect” and “complete”. RVS are designed to be “realistic enough”, aiming for functional task alignment rather than unnecessary “high fidelity” features that are cumbersome, complex, and expensive.

One example of an RVS is the “Deteriorating Patient App”, designed to help 4^th year medical students and first year residents practice the “ABCDEFG” approach to identifying, stabilizing and starting initial management for deteriorating post-operative hospitalized patients when on call. Deteriorating patients are important sources of morbidity and mortality and represent 5-20% of preventable hospital deaths. 28% of patients suffering an un-monitored cardiac arrest die and 60% of these patients show gradual deterioration of their vital signs for hours to days before they die.

Serious Games are learning activities in which learners participate in and contribute to a simulated clinical story with a deliciously uncertain outcome that best supports educational goals by providing learners with voluntary goals, roles, tasks, and rules by which they interact within an environment to make decisions or take actions leading to consequences within the game. (Wiseman 2016; Fullerton 2014).

In this workshop participants will compete in teams to solve Deteriorating Patient App scenarios using a modified “SimWars” (Okuda 2014) serious game approach. Participants will be able to take back to their institutions the tools, concepts and reflections needed to design or adapt their own RVS relevant to their learners’ needs.

90-minute workshop

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Recognize key features of Rapid Virtual Simulations and Serious Games relevant to surgical education

Articulate the “good enough” and “realistic enough” attributes of simulation technologies

Integrate lessons learned into their own clinical educational practices.