from the expected ranks of physicians, nurses, and scores of other allied health professional trades, our health systems function nearly as stand-alone cities with food services, security forces, landscaping, trash collection, all the skilled trades including electricians, plumbing, and HVAC crews; and naturally all the corporate departments that represent the areas required to run a business. When we measure all of the support groups for a health system, it’s easier to list the skilled staff that we don’t have versus those that we do have. All of these different trades represent processes that occur between many areas and as any process engineer has experienced, it is there that we have gross inefficiencies and extra costs. When no one looks at how processes are performed over different areas, inefficient elements flourish.
Computer Simulation Simulation, as we have become accustomed to it, concerns training health care givers on mannequins in either a training environment or a controlled environment. What has been the reality in performing this type of simulation activity shows that this is both time intensive and staffing intensive – two characteristics that do not coincide with our new zone of reality. Unless a simulation budget exists that will not be scrutinized and reduced then these activities will also have to adjust according to the new zone of reality. There are more faces to healthcare simulation than the one just described. In the past five years a growing number of firms have presented better tools to provide us with the ability to use
computer simulation of discrete and specific processes. Using these tools shows that the path to improvement does not lie in providing expensive immersive simulation training to everyone; it simply cannot be sustained. So the area of simulation is affected as the rest of the health system is – it must adjust to the new zone of reality. Computer simulation aids from that perspective. Simulation is not new, having been used by industry and the government, such as NASA, for decades.
Emergency department examination room. Image Credit: Baptist Health South Florida.
Virtual Training. Proven Results.
Visit us in booth #223 at IMSH. Find out how LapSim can enhance your program. www.SurgicalScience.com
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