PROJECT SUMMARY
The science of health care simulation has advanced rapidly over the last two decades. Several key
studies link simulation-based training with improved patient and system-level outcomes. Despite significant
progress in healthcare simulation research, critical gaps in knowledge remain, thus limiting our ability to fully
leverage simulation as a mechanism to improve healthcare quality and patient safety. Emergency medicine as
a specialty is well-positioned advance simulation-based research and patient safety. Emergency medicine has
a broad scope of practice, resulting in medical knowledge and procedural skill requirements that cross multiple
disciplines. From a systems perspective, the emergency department is a microcosm of the healthcare system
and provides opportunity to evaluate processes that apply to multiple healthcare delivery environments.
This grant seeks funding for a one-day conference, the Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM) Consensus
Conference, “Catalyzing System Change Through Healthcare Simulation: Systems, Competency, and
Outcomes” that will address critical barriers in simulation-based research. The specific aims of this
conference are to (1) develop a research agenda that specifically addresses existing barriers to effective
implementation of simulation-based interventions that directly impact patient safety and healthcare quality, (2)
provide consensus recommendations that will optimize future simulation–based research and education efforts
and prioritize research agenda items to foster rapid advancement of knowledge, methodology, implementation
of simulation-based interventions, and (3) identify and build the foundation for a collaborative emergency
medicine simulation-based research network. Academic Emergency Medicine has hosted a consensus
conference for the past 16 years. Each conference results in the development of a research agenda that
addresses a timely issue pertinent to the delivery of emergency care. This conference will bring together
experts from emergency medicine, implementation science, human factors, safety science, systems
engineering, and computer science, thus ensuring a rigorous discourse focusing on critical knowledge and
methodological gaps in simulation research. The journal Academic Emergency Medicine will disseminate
conference proceedings and relevant original research. Overall, this conference will advance simulation-based
research and shed new light on healthcare systems research methodologies and the study of process-level
outcomes with the goal of improving patient safety.
