The International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH), presented by the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH), is the world’s leading scientific conference devoted to health care simulation. As is customary, the Simulation Hospital Advancing Research and Education (S.H.A.R.E.®) was well represented at the annual event.
This year IMSH was held in San Diego, California, from January 20 to 24, and even that city’s unprecedented downpours and flooding couldn’t dampen the spirit of innovation taking place in the convention center, said Ruth Everett-Thomas, PhD, RN, CHSE, associate dean for simulation programs. “It was wonderful,” she added.
Dr. Everett-Thomas serves as vice chair (2023-2025) of the SSH Nursing Section, whose mission is to support health care simulation through networking, education, and research among those in nursing, and through collaboration with the interprofessional simulation community.
At IMSH 2024, she led a panel with her fellow nursing section leaders on simulation-based resources and recommendations for nursing faculty seeking to improve alignment of their curricula with the American Association of Colleges in Nursing (AACN) Essentials. The AACN Essentials are core competency measures, updated in 2021, that are used to define and evaluate quality in nursing education.
“Our panel showed how simulation may be a potential solution for addressing the AACN Essentials,” she said.
Dr. Everett-Thomas attended IMSH 2024 with her S.H.A.R.E.® colleagues Greta Mitzova-Vladinov, DNP, CRNA, CHSE, APRN, director of the nurse anesthesia program at SONHS, and Jeffrey Groom, PhD, CRNA, a S.H.A.R.E.® simulation educator and SSH Academy Fellow. In addition to presenting workshops and serving on panels, the trio explored the vast expanse of new simulation technology on display at IMSH and reconnected with simulation partners from around the globe.
Impressed with the technology she observed, Dr. Everett-Thomas looks forward to bringing some of it back to Miami for her students to experience. “I am looking for equipment that can be used to enhance the learning experience for SONHS students across all programs and educational levels,” she said.
High on her list from the IMSH exhibition are a couple of items that could be applicable for teaching anesthesia principles, acute care, and undergraduate nursing, as well as health science basics. The first is a responsive augmented reality product from Lumis Corp., called InSight Platform™ and Smart Stethoscope™, that projects anatomically accurate activity accompanied by realistic associated sounds, thereby my merging the physical and digital simulation environment. She also liked the functionality of a high-tech test lung machine from Laerdal that can mimic a wide range of respiratory conditions, from the kind of stiff lungs characteristic of COVID to the crackles, or rales, that can be associated with pneumonia infections, thereby allowing students to practice appropriate clinical responses.
It’s clear the IMSH 2024 theme of “Idea: Innovate. Disseminate. Educate. Advocate” is one Dr. Everett-Thomas has taken to heart.
