Vision for ISL and CISL

The activities of CISL will encompass a very wide variety of applications across many disciplines and domains of health care, and for many different types of personnel. The richness of these endeavors can be categorized across eleven different dimensions, each of which represents a different attribute of simulation.  Six dimensions are particularly important:

Read the entire paper “The Future Vision of Simulation in Health Care” from which this categorization is taken.

In the coming years immersive and simulation-based learning will become increasingly important at Stanford University Medical Center and its affiliated hospitals, as at all major teaching facilities. We foresee ISL techniques as being fully integrated into the curriculum of medical students. They will enliven and enrich the learning of health and human disease and of pathophysiology and pharmacology. ISL experiences will be a critical bridge for students between theoretical knowledge and the actual practices and decisions that caring for patients entails. As students are enmeshed in their clinical rotations, ISL exercises will allow them to fully assume the duties and responsibilities of patient care, as if they were the physicians involved.

This approach will only accelerate for “post-graduate medical education”, namely for interns and residents – physicians who are training in the actual fields of medicine that they will practice. ISL curricula – with intensive training sessions – will enable them to become fully capable with the most serious kinds of situations, even those that occur only rarely. Such experiences will also provide important training in non-technical skills of decision-making, crisis management, leadership, communication, and teamwork.

SUMC and affiliated institutions will use the same techniques to provide life-long learning and practice for individuals, teams, and work units of staff-level personnel. This will involve all disciplines in health care, including physicians, nurses, and allied health professionals. ISL exercises will become important components of the ongoing maintenance of competency and quality management of health care institutions that are truly high reliability organizations.