{"id":92856,"date":"2025-02-12T11:00:28","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T16:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/?p=92856"},"modified":"2025-02-19T10:09:19","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T15:09:19","slug":"crash-testers-preparing-our-health-care-teams-for-real-life-emergencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/healthy-tomorrows\/crash-testers-preparing-our-health-care-teams-for-real-life-emergencies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cCrash testers\u201d: Preparing our health-care teams for real-life emergencies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From left to right: Meet \u201ccrash testers\u201d Dr. Glenn Posner, Dr. Doran Drew and Jennifer Dale-Tam, RN. Oh, and the bedridden fellow they\u2019re gathered around? That\u2019s Fred, another proud member of the team.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Would you get into a car that hadn\u2019t been crash tested?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you were in the Intensive Care Unit and needed a central line put into your neck, how would you like to know that your doctor had never performed or practiced it before?\u201d asks Dr. Glenn Posner, Director of The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s Simulation Patient Safety Program and the University of Ottawa Skills and Simulation Centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simulation training involves recreating real health-care scenarios in a controlled environment, allowing teams to practice their skills. Just like car crash tests use dummies, medical simulations use manikins to stand in for patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discover how the program enhances patient care and safety in this Q&A with Dr. Posner, Lead Medical Educator Dr. Doran Drew and Nursing Lead, Simulation Educator Jennifer Dale-Tam, RN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Simulation
Fred the manikin simulates a cardiac arrest. But wait. Isn\u2019t it spelled \u201cmannequin\u201d? You\u2019ll find a \u201cmannequin\u201d in a store window and a \u201cmanikin\u201d in the health-care environment. Manikins are more realistic and may even breathe and speak just like a real person.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What is the Simulation Patient Safety Program?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Posner: \u201cSince launching in 2014, the Simulation Patient Safety Program has brought simulation training beyond the four walls of the Skills and Simulation Centre \u2014 and into the hospital and other clinical settings, where health-care teams are familiar with the space and the equipment. What makes our program so unique is that it\u2019s hospital-wide and not just for specific departments, so you\u2019ll find us running simulations just about everywhere, from the emergency departments to satellite sites.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What types of scenarios do teams simulate?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer: \u201cWe can simulate just about anything! One of the most common scenarios we do is cardiac arrest, which is our bread and butter, but we run many other scenarios as well, including deteriorating patients, such as those with severe infections or who are not breathing well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does the program improve patient safety?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Drew: \u201cThe first way is finding latent safety threats, which are issues in the care environment that haven\u2019t caused any problems yet but could under the wrong circumstances. These issues could be as simple as a call bell that doesn\u2019t work or something more critical, like a faulty piece of equipment for a procedure. The second way, which is a huge benefit of this program, is that it allows teams to train and work together in the clinical environment. They get the chance to practice together in a lower-stakes setting so that when they are taking care of a real patient in a real situation, they can perform to the fullest. Just like high-performance athletes, health-care workers need to practice together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Registered
Registered Practical Nurse Laurie-Ann Hayward practices responding to a respiratory arrest.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What have been some of the program\u2019s biggest successes over the years?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Jennifer: \u201cThere are a lot of them, but here are two big ones: First, a few months before the Westboro bus crash happened in 2019, Dr. Posner\u2019s team had supported a Code Orange (mass casualty) simulation with the Emergency Department, which helped prepare the team for the influx of patients they received after the crash. Second, during the early days of the pandemic, our team was all over the hospital running simulations in various spaces to help develop protocols for COVID-19 because the virus was so unknown back then.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could you give us a glimpse of what the future looks like for the program?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Drew: \u201cWe\u2019re very excited about the future. We will expand the number of scenarios we simulate and expand our training activities into more of the hospital\u2019s satellite sites. We also plan to \u2018crash test\u2019 the health-care spaces at The Ottawa Hospital\u2019s new campus. This is relatively new with health-care spaces, but we plan to run through various scenarios in the new hospital\u2019s rooms, operating theatres, emergency bays and more to make sure they\u2019ll be successful in serving our patients.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Skills and Simulation Centre is home to many more \u201chands on\u201d training programs that enhance patient safety and quality of care. Visit the Centre\u2019s website<\/a> for a deep dive \u2014 and even a virtual tour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Swapping patients for manikins, our Simulation Patient Safety Program recreates medical emergencies right in our hospital, allowing our care teams to \u201ccrash test\u201d their responses to cardiac arrests, respiratory failures, mass casualty events and more. Dive into this Q&A for a closer look at how this training program enhances patient safety and quality of care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":92857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[67,413,121],"class_list":["post-92856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healthy-tomorrows","tag-innovation","tag-patient-safety","tag-quality"],"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ottawahospital.on.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}