Simulation Collaborative Event was a Huge Success
On Friday, June 2, 2017, the Hawaii State Simulation Collaborative hosted a Hawaii Regional Simulation User Network (SUN) event sponsored by Laerdal. The event was held at the IT Center located at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and was spearheaded by Dr. Lorrie Wong, director of the UH Manoa Nursing, UH Translational Health Science Simulation Center. The event registration reached maximum capacity in only a few days. More than 85 nurses, doctors, nursing faculty, IT specialists, pharmacists, and simulation staff attended the all-day free event.
The Hawaii Simulation Collaborative aligns education, practice, and industry in the use of state-of–the-art technology to ensure patient safety; assess competency; build advanced technical skills; and develop decision-making abilities of nurses and other healthcare providers. The network includes academic institutions, healthcare agencies and various industry partners who are committed to optimizing state of the art technology resources to better serve the people of Hawaii.
The Hawaii State Simulation Collaborative is comprised of schools of nursing and practice partners: UH Manoa Nursing, UH Maui College of Nursing, UH Kauai Community College of Nursing, Hawaii Pacific University, Chaminade University, UH Kapiolani Community College, University of Phoenix, Hawaii Community College Nursing Program, The Queen’s Medical Center, Hawaii Pacific Health, Hilo Hospital and, Tripler Army Medical Center.
The keynote speaker was Lillian Emlet, MD, MS, FACEP, FCCM, attending physician in the departments of critical care medicine and emergency at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She is also the associate program director of internal medicine, and an assistant professor in the departments of critical care medicine and emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Medicine. She provided the plenary “Learning Theory and Simulation: Why Practicing How We Play Makes Sense.”
Emlet first became interested in simulation as a learner, noting that she enjoyed the process of simulation because it matched her learning style. Emlet spoke to participants about their role in simulation as an educator. She wanted participants to be reminded about the fundamental education theory and how it impacts simulation education. When asked about how to adjust simulation education tailored for the new generation of students, Emlet said “I’m not sure anyone knows the answer to that. We know they want to perform well. But for the goal driven student looking for answers in a textbook or online, simulation can be a challenge since we are looking at the process. Real learning is really hard. It takes hard work to become good at anything.” Likewise, for students and teachers alike, Emlet challenged participants to dig deeper, become vulnerable, and challenge themselves to push to become better.
The event was sponsored by Laredal. Mark Carlson, regional director and Andrea Sinay, territorial manager for Laredal flew to Hawaii for the event. Laredal sponsors events like these to encourage professional education for government, universities, EMS and collaboratives to develop best practices in simulation. There are other collaboratives similar to the Hawaii Simulation Collaborative across the nation, some even crossing multiple states. But Hawaii stands out amongst the others. “We offer many of these types of free events across the nation. Often with free events, we see low attendance. In three days, this event had reached maximum capacity with a waiting list. And today, everyone plus more, showed up. There is great interest and I could see that participants learned a lot from each other” said Mark Carlson. “The Aloha Spirit really makes Hawaii different from our other markets. The exceptional hospitality of the Simulation Collaborative to the friendly, and supporting staff at the UH Manoa IT Center really sets Hawaii apart.”