October 2022 - SEM Trainers

Improving Healthcare Outcomes with Simulation | Quality Improvement

Whether it’s the massive population that stands second in the world or the large pool of well-trained medical professionals in the country, the healthcare industry in India is one that is quickly making its way to the top. And with the opportunity, comes responsibility.

Simulation is widely credited as not just a powerful education tool, but also an instrument for quality improvement. By creating a safe, interactive learning environment and effecting various technical and soft skills, it creates the perfect opportunity for improving healthcare outcomes in patients.

Simulation creates an interactive learning experience

By creating guided simulated experiences with a hint of substantial aspects of the real world, simulation is able to provide an interactive learning experience and platform. This builds skills and fundamentals in learners, effectively improving patient outcomes.

Simulation provides real-time feedback to learners

When students get immediate feedback through task trainers and systems, two things happen. If they are performing the skill correctly, it helps them proceed with the task more confidently. And if they are doing something wrong, they are corrected at the spot so they can correct their course of action instead of getting negative feedback at the end and feeling disparaged because of it.

Simulation offers an unmatched opportunity to analyze the students’ performance

By creating structured scenarios with events and details that replicate features of real-world clinical situations, simulation is able to provide access to events that cannot otherwise be directly observed. This results in an extraordinary learning experience, and ultimately, into better patient and healthcare outcomes.

Simulation provides a safe, controlled environment for learning

Through simulation-led medical training, students are not only given the freedom to make mistakes, but they are given the unique opportunity to learn from their mistakes. Interestingly, being free to make mistakes also means that they feel free to play around with the functions and explore them. And this makes for healthcare professionals who are not left clueless at an unexpected clinical situation, who are able to deal with any situation that presents itself. This fundamentally results in better healthcare outcomes.

Simulation makes repeated, hands-on practice possible

Without simulation, it would be difficult to provide students with the exposure needed to build certain technical skills that can only be perfected with practice; clearly, theory alone isn’t enough. While the greatest benefit of simulation may be that it allows hands-on practice, much of the skill comes from repeated practice. By creating capable healthcare professionals, the number of errors are highly reduced, and the quality of patient care, immensely improved.

Simulation avoids inconvenience to real patients

It is obvious that when simulation eliminates the need to have freshers practice on real patients, removing that risk, inconvenience, and breach of privacy for the patients means the quality of patient care and healthcare outcomes are greatly improved.

Simulation can highlight communication issues

Many medical errors and patient harm instances can be traced back to failings in communicating effectively. Simulation can shine a light on these and, in turn, help improve the systems and processes by improving team and communication skills.

Simulation can help improve outcomes for life-threatening conditions

Because simulation is able to replicate real-life situations in a safe way, we can simulate life-threatening situations just as easily as everyday situations in the real clinical setting. With simulation, researchers don’t have to wait for rare events to happen to be able to observe them. And by reproducing life-threatening and catastrophic conditions as often as we want, it can be helpful in improving our approach to such situations.

Simulation makes better research possible

The benefits of simulation are not just received through education; it also makes better research possible. For example, simulation can be used to study the impact of noise on anesthetists’ stress level in operation theaters. It can give insight into things in a way that nothing else can. And better research automatically improves the quality of healthcare outcomes globally. Simulation-based research may be the biggest way in which simulation is helping improve healthcare outcomes and the quality of patient care.

The effort to improve healthcare outcomes with simulation does face a few challenges. For instance, the outcomes may depend on the participants, the setting, and the scenario, and it may be hard to pinpoint what led to the change in outcome.

Regardless, through all the direct and indirect benefits it has to offer, it is evident that simulation is effective at improving healthcare systems and processes. It can help streamline protocols without involving patients and help identify latent safety threats as well. It can also be used to test new approaches before adopting them in the real clinical setting. Additionally, measuring patient outcomes helps adopt best practices, and in turn, further improve outcomes.

More Blog:

Medical Simulation Training: Market Share, Projected Growth

How to Perform Life-Saving CPR on Adults, Children, and Infants | by SEM Trainers

When most people talk about learning life-saving CPR, they either think they won’t be able to do it or wonder if they’ll ever really be in that situation. But did you know that around 45% of cardiac arrest victims are saved because a bystander did CPR on them?

Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is an emergency procedure and a first-aid, life-saving skill that can restore breathing and heartbeat in someone who has gone into cardiac arrest and isn’t breathing properly. Whether it’s from a heart attack, near-drowning, or other causes, CPR can save a life using procedures like chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth breathing. While this doesn’t mean that someone saved with CPR will magically be treated, CPR can keep blood flowing and keep the brain and other organs till medical help arrives.

The thing is- you don’t need to be a health professional to do CPR, anyone can learn to do it. By learning life-saving CPR, you can not only save the life of a stranger some day, but also of a friend or family member.

How to do Chest Compressions

Lay the patient on their back, kneeling next to them.
Put the heel of your hand on their chest- in the center of the lower half of the breastbone. Put your other hand on top of the first and interlock your fingers.
Bring yourself above the patient’s chest, and with straight arms, use your body weight to press down on their chest by 1/3 of their chest depth.
Release the pressure. One compression is complete.

How to give Mouth-to-Mouth

Put one hand on their forehead and the other under their chin to open their airway.
Use one hand to pinch their nose closed, and the other to open their mouth.
Now, take a breath in and, placing your lips on theirs to create a seal, blow into their mouth for 1 second and watch the chest rise. After the breath, watch the chest fall, and listen and feel for the air being expelled.
Then, take another breath and repeat.

If the chest does not rise, check the mouth for any blockages and remove them. The head should be tilted and no air should be leaking out from your mouth to theirs.

In 2 minutes, you should give 5 sets of 30 compressions followed by 2 breaths for each set. If you’re only doing compressions, do 100-120 compressions per minute. Although, alternating between compressions and breaths can help you do it longer.

Keep doing this till help arrives, you get exhausted, or the patient starts coughing, talking, breathing normally, or moving again- then put them in the recovery position.

How to do CPR on an Adult

First, check if the scene is safe to help. Don’t put yourself or others in danger.
Now, look for a response from the patient- loudly ask their name and squeeze their shoulder.
If they don’t respond, call 108 or ask someone else to call, but don’t leave the patient alone.
Check if their mouth and throat are clear and remove blockages like vomit, blood, or food. Tilt their head back and lift their chin.
Check their breathing. Even if the patient is breathing properly, stay with them till help arrives. If they’re not breathing properly, start chest compressions immediately using both hands.
Attach a defibrillator, if available.

How to do CPR on a Child

The process of giving CPR to a child is almost the same as that for an adult. The only difference here is that you’ll probably do the compressions with one hand instead of 2 if the child’s chest is too small for 2 hands.

How to do CPR on an Infant

For babies less than 1 year old, the process is almost the same as that for an adult or a child. There are a few differences, like when checking for a response from the baby, you shouldn’t shake them as it can cause shaken baby syndrome, and ultimately, even death. Also, for infants, you’ll do the compressions with only 2 fingers. And for mouth-to-mouth, you’ll need to tilt their head back very slightly and lift their chin without resting your hands on their throat before taking a breath in and covering their mouth and nose with your mouth and blowing for 1 second. You’ll watch the chest rise, and then you’ll watch the chest fall after the breath, and listen and feel for signs of air being expelled.

You really don’t need to be a doctor or a medical professional to be able to do CPR on someone and save a life. The key is to start as soon as you can.