By: Victoria Brazil (@SocraticEM)

Every year at the AMEE (International Association for Health Professions Education) conference, the Simulation Committee runs a fast-paced, high-energy “journal club” where four standout papers from the previous 12–18 months are pitched, probed, and then  voted on by the audience. Shortlisted papers are nominated by committee members and editors-in-chief across the major sim journals, screened by three blinded reviewers for innovation, methodological rigour, and field impact, and the top four authors are invited to present 10 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A. The room votes, and the winner takes home bragging rights and €1000 (this year sponsored by MidtSim in Denmark).

Below is a taster of the four finalists:

1) “Dancing with emotions” – how facilitators read and respond in the moment

Behrens CC, Dolmans DH, Driessen EW, Gormley GJ. Med Educ. 2025. Link to paper

This qualitative interpretive descriptive study interviews 10 simulation facilitators to understand how they perceive students’ achievement emotions and decide whether (and how) to intervene during scenarios. Drawing on control-value theory, the team distils (and anthropomorphises!) three crafted “stories”: (1) facilitators who turn down the heat by adjusting scenario complexity to preserve learning; (2) those who let learners feel the heat to mirror clinical reality; and (3) those who hold their line during the case and attend to emotions in the debrief. The overarching theme? Facilitator beliefs—shaped by teaching and real-world practice—mediate how they act on emotions.

This is rich, practice-proximal work. It illuminates the minute-to-minute judgments we make about psychological safety vs. stretch and invites us to explicitly train for that “dance” rather than leaving it to instinct.

2) Instruction and guidance during simulation – opening the black box

Bevis Z, Nestel D, Kumar A, et al. J Healthc Simul. 2025. Link to paper

Scoping 9,232 records down to 90 studies, this review maps what scaffolding happens inside scenarios, who provides it (human tutors, computer tutors, or both), and why. Human strategies include verbal guidance, checklists, collaboration scripts, encouragement, modelling, physical guidance, and prescribed methods like rapid-cycle deliberate practice. Computers add audio prompts, visualisations, step-by-steps, intelligent tutoring, and pause buttons. The authors argue for a clearer distinction between facilitation for implementation fidelity and instruction for learning, and for intentional “fade” of supports to avoid hyper- or hypo-mediation.

If you’ve ever wondered whether nudging a team mid-case “breaks” the sim, this review says: do it- on purpose, for learning – and name your rationale. It also charts theoretical scaffolding roots and reminds us to tailor support to learner level, then progressively remove it.

3) “I Hate Sim!” — prebriefing with a therapeutic stance

Drake G, Drewek K. Simul Healthc. 2024. Link to paper

A punchy concepts-and-commentary piece that reframes prebriefing through psychotherapeutic lenses. The authors contrast the clinical “doing something” mode with an educator stance of “standing there” – benign, curious presence that contains anxiety and invites epistemic trust. They revisit the familiar prebrief list (objectives, roles, orientation, fiction contract, assessment, debrief process, confidentiality, logistics, learner goals), but insist that how we hold the room matters as much as what we say – especially with anxious or reticent learners.

Practical takeaway: cultivate a stable stance so difficult feelings can be noticed, tolerated, and used as learning data – without defaulting to defensive autopilot.

4) Measuring team cognition on purpose (and at the right time)

Evans JC, Evans MB, Lingard L. Adv Simul. 2025. Link to paper

We all talk about “shared mental models”, but we mostly infer them after the fact. This narrative review diagnoses the problem—healthcare sim tends to rely on indirect, post-task measures—and offers a framework that maps measurement by directness and timing (pre-, in-, post-task), with guidance on selecting tools for team mental models and team situational awareness. The authors recommend capturing cognition before, during, and after scenarios, aligning our methods with human factors and organisational psych.

If we can see what’s actually in heads (not just what looks coordinated), we can coach toward it – moving from performance gloss to cognitive granularity.

A mini-theme this year? Emotions, support, and thinking made visible

Two papers zoom in on emotion and stance (Behrens; Drake & Drewek), one normalises in-scenario scaffolding (Bevis), and one gives us language to measure team thinking deliberately (Evans). Together they nudge us to be more explicit—about how we tune difficulty, when we step in, how we prebrief, and what we’re truly measuring.

And the winner is ….

“I hate sim !…”

Congratulations to Drs Drake and Drewek, and many thanks to the organiser of the event.

Happy reading!

Photo generated by Chat GPT

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