Medical Simulation Overview

Goal
To allow physicians and other healthcare professionals to develop and perfect their skills without risk to patients

Value
Improves patient safety by allowing health-care professionals to practice procedures until they achieve proficiency
Provides a training environment that does not put patients at risk

Advantages
Provides risk-free practice

Medical simulation provides training to proficiency in rare, complicated, or otherwise error-prone tasks without practicing on patients.

Reduces medical errors
Each year, 98,000 people die from medical errors; simulation-based training reduces errors by offering repetitive practice and immediate performance feedback.

Standardizes training
Simulation-based training systems use objective performance metrics to define proficiency, thereby standardizing definitions of success for medical procedures.

Fills the training gap
The recently mandated 80-hour workweek for medical residents has reduced the time available for medical training; simulation offers self-paced cognitive and practical training to fill the gap.

Savings
Medical errors cost $37-50 billion each year; about half of these errors are preventable.
Simulation-based training lowers costs through improved clinical outcomes.
Simulation-based training also may provide long-term savings by replacing traditional training methods and decreasing the need for clinical resources (e.g., operating room time) and instructors.

Support
The U.S. Department of Defense has led the way in funding advances in medical simulation, but more non-military support is needed to integrate medical simulation into civilian medical and surgical curricula.

Lessons Learned
Military lessons learned must be incorporated into civilian health care systems.
Simulation-based medical training incorporates the lessons learned in combat into current training in both the military and civilian arenas.

Urgency
Healthcare providers are being held to a higher standard of accountability.
Simulation-based medical training provides the performance metrics necessary to standardize training and establish criteria for success.