By: Victoria Brazil (@SocraticEM)
The AMEE conference was recently held in Basel, Switzerland. It’s a gathering of 3000+ health professional educators from around the world.
AMEE (International Association for Health Professions Education) has a simulation committee, currently led by Rune Dall Jensen. Each year there is a journal club where 4 articles are selected from the prior year’s publications, and the authors are asked to present at AMEE to compete for a prize.
The winner was Sarah Blissett and team from Canada, with their article: How do residents respond to uncertainty with peers and supervisors in multidisciplinary teams? Insights from simulations with epistemic fidelity. Adv Simul 9, 8 (2024)
Congratulations!
In this article the study team explored how medical residents respond to uncertainty when working within multidisciplinary teams. Using simulation-primed qualitative inquiry, they investigated residents’ cognitive, behavioural, and emotional responses to uncertainty. Their scenarios involved ambiguous and complex clinical situations, specifically obstetric cases with cardiac co-morbidities.
They found that residents generally exhibited positive responses to uncertainty when interacting with their peers, happy to embrace the importance of clear communication and teamwork. However, when faced with uncertainty in the presence of supervisors, residents often displayed negative responses, fearing judgment and perceived threats to their independence and trustworthiness. Despite recognizing the educational value of expressing uncertainty, the apprehension surrounding potential negative evaluations hindered their willingness to do so. Residents highly valued instances in which supervisors were forthcoming about their own uncertainty! This study starkly illustrates what we’re up against when we blithely tell our learners to say ‘I don’t know’ More discussion about this paper in this episode of Simulcast
The other articles..
- Ryan Brydges presented a paper on behalf of his team: Lorello GR, et.al. Relinquishing control? Supervisor co-regulation may disrupt students’ self-regulated learning during simulation-based training. Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2024 Mar;29(1):9-25.
The research team investigated the dynamics of co-regulation between educators and learners during simulation-based training for cardiac murmur auscultation. In this context Co-regulated learning (Co-RL) involves a shared process where both educators and learners actively manage cognitive and emotional challenges throughout the learning experience.
The study compared two groups of medical students learning how to distinguish cardiac murmurs using a simulator designed for that purpose. In one group, the student had an instructor present and in the other group they were self-directed. Both groups had watched a short instructional video prior to the simulation session. The researchers found the self-directed groups learning outcomes to be non-inferior to the one with the instructor, possibly because the instructor presence prevented them from developing their own schemas! This finding alone might not be enough to drive instructors from skills training, but it does raise interesting questions.
- Andrea Doyle presented her team’s scoping review. Doyle et. al.(2023). Training simulated participants for role portrayal and feedback practices in communication skills training: A BEME scoping review: BEME Guide No. 86 . Medical Teacher, 46(2), 162–178.
This group sought to “systematically map the evidence related to SPs’ role as educators and identifies how SPs prepare for their role and feedback practices.” 98 studies were included. There was a notable lack of consistency in the detail regarding the scenario formats for communication skills training interventions, SP characteristics, and approaches to training for feedback and role portrayal. Few articles cited or used the ASPE Standards of Best Practice. It seems we still have a way to go with SP methodology, despite some notable exemplars.
I was fortunate enough to present my own work, authored with Gabe Reedy. We’ve already covered this on the ICEnet blog here.
Well done to all involved. Next year’s AMEE conference is in Barcelona. More about the AMEE Simulation Committee here.
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