The Impact of Interprofessional Immersive Simulation-Based Education on Learning Outcomes and Perceived Competence and Practice in Specialty and Sub-specialty Critical Care Courses

Background

Critical care is a stressful environment with high work intensity. In critical care, interprofessional healthcare teams look after patients with or at risk of developing acute and life-threatening organ dysfunctions. There are critical situations and emergencies where immediate reactions or interventions are essential to save patients’ lives. High levels of critical care workload and complexity can increase the likelihood of mistakes and practice errors. Medical and Clinical personnel who acquired the relevant training through specialty or sub-specialty courses are more effective in managing critical care cases with a higher level of confidence and competence. Hamad International Training Center (HITC) of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) offers a group of interprofessional specialty and sub-specialty critical care courses incorporating full-scale scenario-based immersive simulation using a patient simulator. This describes the impact of interprofessional immersive simulation-based education on critical care teams' perceived competence and clinical practices.

Methods

A self-reported questionnaire was distributed to candidates (N=124) who attended various specialty and sub-specialty critical care simulation-based courses (N=5) between January 2023 and June 2023 (Table 1).

Results

There was a 100% response rate from the post-course evaluation survey. Participants reported that the interprofessional immersive simulation-based education positively impacted their critical care competence and clinical practices. The course design enabled active engagement of learners to achieve the intended learning objectives and for them to be actively engaged with a high level of perceived satisfaction. The fact that this questionnaire reports findings from a single center limits generalizability of the findings as multicenter involvement enhances questionnaire findings’ validity.

Conclusion

The use of interprofessional immersive simulation-based education can provide learners with an opportunity to develop critical care competence and enhance clinical practices.