Simulation in health care provider education at Brooke Army Medical Center

The teaching and assessment of clinical skills are critical components of health care provider education, and clinical skill proficiency is essential for safe and successful health care delivery. Medical simulation is being increasingly recognized in health care education as an extremely valuable mechanism for training and assessing clinical skills. As in other high-stakes professions, the use of simulation can enhance the proficiency and efficiency of training while maximizing safety and minimizing risk. Located within Brooke Army Medical Center, the Trauma Simulation Training Center is a multifaceted, full-service, medical simulation facility. In an effort to improve and to expand the role of simulation, we collected data on utilization of the facility and the level of overall satisfaction among our users. Results showed that the primary users were graduate medical education physicians-in-training. In addition, survey results demonstrated that users favored simulation-based learning because of the realism of simulated scenarios. The Trauma Simulation Training Center embraces the simulation-based medical education philosophy by actively inviting training program participation, and we realize that more research is needed to determine the effectiveness of this teaching and assessment modality.