Geisinger Education & Medical Simulation
Immersive learning through medical simulation for confident and skilled healthcare professionals
The Geisinger Education and Medical Simulation (GEMS) Center was designed to provide a comprehensive program of clinical skills education and assessment. This includes such things as standardized patients and confederates, task trainers, high fidelity simulations, web-based modules and workshops for medical students, residents, attending physicians, advanced practitioners, nurses, respiratory therapists and other members of the healthcare team.
The GEMS Center promotes clinical skills activities that support and enhance interprofessional and interdisciplinary teamwork, educational accreditation, maintenance of certification, and patient safety and quality of care initiatives. These initiatives integrate simulation to effectively train and objectively assess applied knowledge, adequacy of skills and level of competence.
Clinical simulation is a remarkable resource that can be utilized by any department or specialty throughout the system.
What are standardized patients (SPs)?
SPs are individuals that have been trained to simulate in a defined, consistent and standardized manner, a patient in a medical situation. An SP is a person who portrays a patient so that someone can learn how to interact with that patient.
How do we utilize SPs?
We use SPs to see how well a student, resident, fellow or practicing provider can get information from a patient or do a physical exam, to let doctors’ practice difficult communication situations before having those conversations in the “real world,” to demonstrate a senior physician’s communication skills to learners and for other reasons.
The SP provides feedback to the learner based on the interaction. There is flexibility within the role of the SP depending on the need of the learner and the objectives of the educational activity. The SP could play a variety of roles, such as:
- A patient
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A patient instructor (specifically guiding a learner through a skill development, such as an abdominal exam)
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A learner ally (providing information to the learner during a simulated encounter, like a trauma simulation)
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A family member or friend of a patient
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A healthcare provider (physician, nurse, etc.)
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In addition, within these different roles, the SP can be utilized to educate and achieve a number of different objectives:
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History taking skills
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Physical exam skills
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Communication skills
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Examination skills
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Ultrasound skills
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Why do we use SPs?
The critical aspect of a Healthcare Communication Program is the ability to recreate a clinical setting in which the learner can practice their clinical and interpersonal skills with a “standardized patient.” The value of using SPs for these roles and teaching objectives is extremely high. An SP encounter provides the educator with a great deal of control over a clinical encounter.
What do we do in our Healthcare Communication Program?
Our Healthcare Communication Program encompasses a process that includes writing cases for standardized encounters, training SPs, developing assessment tools and providing the logistics/environment for the program. We currently have six standardized patient clinic rooms and we can simulation inpatient room settings in the GEMS simulation space and a standardized patient flex pool. We develop sessions based on the needs of the learners and utilize several different learning formats including SP encounters for evaluation, small and large group coaching and feedback sessions. We have developed several cases but are constantly updating and developing new ones, some examples are listed below:
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Standardized patients – We currently have 45 trained actors.
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Relationship-centered communication faculty – We currently have over 40 faculty members trained in relationship-centered communication to coach and provide feedback during SP sessions.