Expansion of simulation and extended reality for undergraduate health professions education: A call to action

Sara K Donovan; Jocelyn J Herstein; Charles G Prober; Joseph C Kolars; James A Gordon; Pam Boyers; Jeffrey Gold; H Dele Davies

doi:10.1016/j.xjep.2021.100436

Expansion of simulation and extended reality for undergraduate health professions education: A call to action

J Interprof Educ Pract. 2021 Sep:24:100436. doi: 10.1016/j.xjep.2021.100436. Epub 2021 May 7.

Authors

Sara K Donovan¹, Jocelyn J Herstein², Charles G Prober³, Joseph C Kolars⁴, James A Gordon⁵, Pam Boyers¹, Jeffrey Gold⁶, H Dele Davies¹

Affiliations

¹ University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA.
² College of Public Health, Omaha, NE, USA.
³ Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁴ University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
⁵ Chief Learning Officer and Director of the MGH Learning Laboratory, Massachusetts General Hospital; Director of the Gilbert Program in Medical Simulation and Professor of Medicine and Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
⁶ University of Nebraska Medical Center, University of Nebraska-Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA.

Abstract

In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic limited access for many health professions students to clinical settings amid concerns about availability of appropriate personal protective equipment as well as the desire to limit exposure in these high-risk settings. Furthermore, the pandemic led to a need to cancel clinics and inpatient rotations, with a major impact on training for health professions and interprofessional health delivery, the long-term effects of which are currently unknown. While problematic, this also presents an opportunity to reflect on challenges facing the traditional clinical training paradigm in a rapidly changing and complex health care system and develop sustainable, high-quality competency-based educational models that incorporate rapidly progressing technologies. We call for pilot studies to explore specific simulation-based inpatient and outpatient clinical rotations for professional and interprofessional training.

Keywords: COVID-19; Clinical rotation; Interprofessional education; Medicine; Simulation.

Publication types

Editorial