My Reflections
Please click on any "pink hyperlink" to jump to vivid examples supporting my statements
This past decade in simulation has truly been invigorating and insightful. Participating in advancing the science of simulation through scholarship and practice has been impactful for me personally. I have grown to analyze and interpret critical thinking. I have learned to facilitate and debrief keeping the student's learning at the center in place of my own agenda. Truly developing a spirit of discovery learning has not been an easy journey from teacher to facilitator. I have met with much enthusiasm as well as much resistance over the years. I have grown exponentially over the past 10 years in use of adult, discovery and experiential learning theories to guide intentional integration. I am amazed at my own growth and the growth of my colleagues and our programs. We have many simulation champions now and my hope is to developed many more certified healthcare simulation educators as I continue on this journey. I am a lifelong learner, so as an Executive Director, I feel it continues to be important to demonstrate competency. This includes my own development and competency. In 2017, I took and passed the Certified Healthcare Simulation Operation Specialist Certification. I value certification and want to add to the development of operational processes and to support development of other operational specialists. My future goals are to further contribute to the scholarly advancements in healthcare simulation, in particular continue research in pre-briefing, rigorous outcomes measurements with quantifiable results and continue to develop others in the profession.
For testimonial support of my capabilities, please read my mentor letter from Dr. Marsha Howell-Adams
and recommendations from colleagues at the bottom of my home page.
My scholarship and research has grown expansively in the past five years, I have co-authored eight standards of best practice in healthcare simulation through my leadership and service in the International Nursing Association for Clinical Simulation & Learning, networking in SSH and experience as the Executive Director of a Ssmulation center. In this same time frame, I have successfully advanced a solid sustainable program of scholarship as evidenced by 3 book chapters in simulation textbooks, as the first author on two (one in press) and second author on one chapter. Eighteen peer reviewed articles published which include three as first author and eight as second author with one article in press and another submitted for review for a total of 20 manuscripts since 2013 with two additional submitted manuscripts one of which is a systematic review on IPE in Nursing Education. I have further contributed to the advancement of the profession through over 30 international presentations in my career in simulation. My writing in particular has grown from international clinical standards of best practice culminating in a published Systematic Review on Interprofessional Education in Nursing in 2018 and mentored another which was submitted, initially accepted with revisions on Telehealth in Nursing Education this year. I am currently in the process of a 3rd systematic review on prebriefing in healthcare simulation.
Service to the profession, detailed in my CV has always been a priority. To discover new ideas, build strong diverse interprofessional teams and make change you must be at the table to listen and participate. This service has broadened my cultural and leadership capacities. Since receiving my CHSE in 2012, I have served on two international clinical simulation boards and served on the international healthcare simulation educator certification sub-committee. I expanded my expertise with an additional certification the Certified Healthcare Simulation Operation Specialist (CHSOS) and am one of few with dual (Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator) international certification who also consult for other Universities regularly in healthcare simulation.
As Executive Director of a simulation center strategic planning and programmatic frameworks guide development. To view images of our frameworks, operational process and theoretical underpinning of our program please the images in My Story.
As lead author on the INACSL Standard of Best practice for Simulation: Design in 2015, I operationalized and implemented the 11 criterion for best practice is simulation design as an evidenced based practice checklist for all simulation activities during the planning process. this truly helps faculty development and incorporated a process for staff to aid in operationalizing educational activities further improving the collaboration process. The established "Dry Run Checklist" is used with educators, facilitators and collaborators. This adherence to best practice has elevated our program immensely. We catch errors in simulation design, communication errors unforseen from email and phone conversations and identify unintended training errors at every dry-run. This developmental process immensely improves the integrity begins validation of scenarios prior to implementation with students which has truly improved the quality of simulation activities across programs. Please see additional detailed examples of development activities which I have led under My Story.
My efforts are now concentrated on integration of our standardized patient (SP) program and telehealth. I developed an SP program three years ago which included a process for hiring and training SPs. Since that time I have developed a draft operational handbook and submitted resources for faculty development currently being reviewed by leadership teams.
Evaluation is integral in quality assurance and improving simulated experiences. During simulations, we make notes on the cases to review with faculty at the end of each semester in the next dry-run. Ten years ago we implemented the SET tool for simulation evaluation and five years ago, we switched to a more rigorous tool, program wide, using the NLN Educational Outcomes tool via Qualtrics to assess simulation activities after each simulation. This information is reviewed and integrated into the next dry-run of the scenario. We have started a process now to have the curricular committees lead further development to improve simulation objective maps (our blueprint for our cases) and performance measure checklists to be more precise and measurable to integrate competency based assessment throughout the curriculum. We are planning a five year review of this data in 2019.