One morning in April, a few dozen students from the University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies and Miller School of Medicine came together from two different campuses to polish their teamwork and communications skills as future health professionals. The four-hour Interprofessional Education (IPE) training exercise kicked off at 8 a.m. with a group orientation and lecture at S.H.A.R.E. Simulation Hospital Advancing Research & Education® (S.H.A.R.E.) and ended before lunch with a 30-minute wrap-up session.
For two intense hours in between, participants plunged into a series of simulated medical scenarios and team-building activities that combined nursing and medical learners in groups of eight.
The annual event was coordinated by University nursing and medical faculty, as well as simulation specialists and technologists from S.H.A.R.E. and The Gordon Center for Simulation and Innovation in Medical Education, a Miller School center of excellence.
“This exercise highlights interprofessional education across both campuses,” said Zuzer Calero, S.H.A.R.E.’s executive director of business operations. “It is designed to strengthen team building and foster clear, effective communication among health care providers who will work closely together in real-world clinical settings, with the overall experience centered on collaboration and shared learning.”
Jeffrey Groom, Ph.D., CRNA, FSSH, an adjunct professor of clinical who leads special projects for S.H.A.R.E., put the students through a series of creative team-building activities in the skills lab. Though designed to be fun, the activities also encouraged out-of-the-box thinking and problem-solving. In one activity, for example, teams had to build a tower as high as they could in just 10 minutes using only raw spaghetti sticks and marshmallows.
“One of the things we've found in health care is when we try to teach health care people about teamwork, if we start out with a medical scenario, they can get bogged down in the medicine, and the teamwork piece falls by the wayside,” Groom told the students. “The skill set of teamwork is the same, whether you're playing football or hockey, or managing a cardiac arrest. You're not competing against each other. You're just competing against the challenge.”
The teams also had to work competently together to assess and manage a couple of medical scenarios. One involved a patient with a life-threatening bleed that required a multitude of team communication and fast action. First and foremost, the situation demanded lifting the sheet to examine the patient. In addition to holding pressure on the wound while waiting for blood to arrive, the team also had to address the arrival of a distraught family member.
After each scenario, teams had the chance to reflect on the experience and process it, both by watching via closed-circuit monitor as other teams tackled the same scenario and by taking part in the formal post-simulation process known as “debriefing,” which gives participants time to process and talk through their training, both from the individual and group perspective.
Simulation learning requires an environment of trust and safety to ensure full immersion in the learning experience and lower self-consciousness about making mistakes in front of others. As part of creating this safe environment, it is made clear to all participants that debriefing takes place in strictest confidence between learners and educators.
Because of this confidentiality, Samia Medeiros Barbar, M.D., CHSE, an assistant professor of medical education at the Miller School, who led several debriefing sessions during this year’s IPE, can’t share the name of the team or any individual participants. She did, however, share afterwards that the debriefing exercise enabled her to give positive feedback. Specifically, she said she had the chance to reassure one student who expressed doubts about their health care instincts and contributions to the team. She assured the student their participation had been good and appropriate to the emergency at hand. “In an emergency setting, you’re filling in the gaps,” Dr. Medeiros Barbar explained. Similarly, IPE trainings like these can help fill gaps by teaching future health professionals to be better teammates earlier in their clinical careers.
The University’s IPE training takes place at the end of each spring semester, connecting nursing students with clinical experience and fourth-year medical students.
Video: https://vimeo.com/1194812589/123112637f?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci
