Rémy Roe joined the United States Army as a Special Operations Combat Medic in June 2006. He spent most of his career juggling multiple combat deployments, overseas tours, and being a father to two sons while studying. Since 2013 he has earned a bachelor's degree in religion, a master's degree in psychology, and a master's degree in sociology, and is currently a Ph.D. Student studying psychology. As a two-time purple-heart recipient, Rémy chose to retire in 2021 after 15 years of military service. He currently works as a Simulationist at the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Center for Immersive and Simulation-based Learning (CISL). Remy refers to himself as a “tactical academic” and hopes to use his military experience and background together with continued education to further research in the fields of simulation and psychology.
Sponsored by https://www.simvs.com/
Remy Roe- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/remyroe/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RemyTheRockstar
Graciously sponsored by SimVS
https://www.simvs.com/
Innovative SimSolutions.
Your turnkey solution provider for medical simulation programs, sim centers & faculty design.
Rémy Roe joined the United States Army as a Special Operations Combat Medic in June 2006. He spent most of his career juggling multiple combat deployments, overseas tours, and being a father to two sons while studying. Since 2013 he has earned a bachelor's degree in religion, a master's degree in psychology, and a master's degree in sociology, and is currently a Ph.D. Student studying psychology. As a two-time purple-heart recipient, Rémy chose to retire in 2021 after 15 years of military service. He currently works as a Simulationist at the Stanford University School of Medicine’s Center for Immersive and Simulation-based Learning (CISL). Remy refers to himself as a “tactical academic” and hopes to use his military experience and background together with continued education to further research in the fields of simulation and psychology.
Sponsored by https://www.simvs.com/
Remy Roe- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/remyroe/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RemyTheRockstar
Graciously sponsored by SimVS
https://www.simvs.com/
Innovative SimSolutions.
Your turnkey solution provider for medical simulation programs, sim centers & faculty design.
We'd like to thank our sponsor for this episode, SIM VS- vital sign monitor systems. The SIM VS monitors can help you economically expand your simulation capabilities. To learn more, please visit them today. Follow the link in the show notes.
Intro:Welcome to The Sim Cafe. A podcast produced by the team at Innovative Simsolutions, edited by Shelly Houser. Join our host Deb Tauber, as she sits down with subject matter experts from across the globe to reimagine clinical education and the use of simulation. So pour yourself a cup of relaxation, sit back, tune in and learn something new from The Sim Cafe.
Deb:Welcome to another episode of The Sim Cafe today. We're truly blessed to have Remy Roe. Remy is a retired US army special operations combat medic who currently works is a simulation technology specialist at the Stanford University School of Medicine Center for Immersive and Simulation based learning CISL. He's worked as a healthcare simulation operator, educator and developer around the globe. He served as a senior instructor at the largest medical simulation training center in the department of defense, DOD before moving to Stanford. Roe is currently a PhD student studying psychology with a master's degree in personality, psychology and sociology. Remy currently lives in Menlo Park, California and enjoys hiking, traveling and coaching Olympic weight lifting in his spare time. Remy is an up and coming simulationist to this space and he also is a recipient of a purple heart award. Thank you Remy for your service. And why don't you go ahead and tell your guests a little bit, anything I might have missed, and then we can start,
Remy:Uh, first, thank you very much for having me on. I listened to your podcast. I, I follow it every week. You make me sound way cooler than I am. I promise you, uh, so you, you pretty much so covered it. I that's, uh, that's me in a nutshell, I think if there was anything about myself, I like to call myself, uh, a tactical academic meaning. I really believe in combining life experience, uh, time on the ground working with formal education, right? Often I think we tend to over or devalue one or the other, uh, where the, the key is to, to balance both of those together.
Deb:No, I agree. And this is the second taping, uh, for Remy and I, what happened was I met him, uh, around St. Patrick's on St. Patrick's day. Of course, someone from Chicago would absolutely say no, that is a, is a big date. Right?<laugh> and I thought that I had hit record and I didn't. So we are redoing our episode. So thank you again, Remy. And, uh, why don't you go ahead and start out with our first question is please share your story about how you got into simulation with our guests.
Remy:Yeah, absolutely. So like you've said, I started originally in the military as my first career. I went through some traumatic events during the war in Afghanistan. Like a lot of us do, which led to me going to special forces selection, uh, and becoming a special operations combat medic from there. I operated, uh, throughout my career on, on six different continents and eventually as I started to get older. And then when I was, uh, wounded in combat, I started to transition from the person who was doing things into the person who was teaching things, uh, which I think is a necessary segue, right? Eventually you have to go from what we like to call a, a combat multiplier or a force multiplier. You know, I can only make so much of a difference, but if I can create more of me and more of better than me, uh, then you really make an impact. One of the w ays we do that in the DOD is through what we call medical simulation training centers o r mystics. I wound up working at mystics all over the globe a nd in one way or another writing instruction, developing P OI running simulation, until right before I got o ut o f the military, I was at Fort hood, Texas, and they have the largest mystic in the entire DOD. So I, I wound up doing simulation with, u h, civilian law enforcement officers, first responders, physicians, combat medics. It was just such an amazing, satisfying experience to go from having boots on the ground to training and preparing the future of boots on the ground to just really working at t he, t he top of technology and innovation in that field. And then those experiences, once I retired, I had an amazing opportunity and was, was blessed to be offered this position here at Stanford. And I just feel like I'm, I'm continuing that path and what I'm, what I'm the most grateful for this journey a nd simulation is I'm just constantly offered a seat at the table. You know, when I first met you and, a nd Lance at Healthy Simulation.com, people w ith so much more experienced than me in different ways are always just ready to, to hear input. And that's just been such an amazing experience that I didn't expect, especially coming here to Stanford a t major imposter syndrome and very quickly that was brushed off. And I was told like, Hey man, y ou, you belong here. U m, and I'm, I'm just so grateful for that. And here we are.
Deb:Yeah, yeah, you do belong here. You do belong here. What's it like to work with Dr. Gaba?
Remy:<laugh> it's so funny. David Gaba is, uh, an amazing human, but everybody is always like, Ooh, Dr. Gaba. And my response is always, that's the guy that practices juggling in the, or like, he's just, he's such a goofy genius down to earth human, who is always receptive to input. Like I'm, I'm nobody. Uh, and Dr. Gaba, I've never felt like he wasn't listening to what I have to say. And he is such an expert at providing input without being patronizing or demeaning. You know, I, I wrote an article for healthy simulation talking about, you know, part of it was the origins of simulation and Dr. Gaba gave some amazing constructive criticism when in reality he could have been like, I mean, I was there. I know<laugh> um, so it's just a, it's amazing to be, uh, treated like a colleague in someone who pioneered in this field.
Deb:Yeah. That's gotta be very exciting. Thank you for sharing that. Remy, why don't you share with us, with our listeners, your favorite or most impactful simulation story?
Remy:Yeah. So this immediately, uh, sticks out to me earlier on when I first started at Stanford. I I've been here. I say that like, I've been here forever. I've been here just over a year. I was working with the anesthesiology crew on a MOCA. I wanna say was the course we were doing. And there were some things that I, I knew from my pre-hospital trauma experience, uh, that I had provided some input on. And the anesthesiologist had, had not heard of that practice before, or the way to teach it. They knew it, but the way I was, you know, saying to teach it was, was new to them. And then I was able to show them like my personal surgical CRI kit, I used in combat operations. And they were so receptive that the verbiage and, and the, the teaching I used, they put it into their curriculum and the CRI kit that I have, they wound up ordering in large numbers. And they're using that now when they teach. Uh, and it was just a full circle, amazing moment that, that things that had been taught and used in combat and things that I was teaching young soldiers, I, I took to the most selective school in the nation and was listened to, and that stuff was applied. And I just felt like, wow, like I'm, I'm actually making a difference. It was, it was amazing.
Deb:That's fantastic. Do you have any other stories for our listeners or, you know, just like specific moments that you could share?
Remy:I, I guess if there was more of a theme than a story for me for simulation is I often like to tell people in healthcare simulation, uh, kill a mannequin. So you don't wind up risking a real person's life one day. And that happens, I think, in clinical healthcare simulation and prehospital trauma, the idea of, uh, one of the biggest things that happened to me when I was younger, that it is so important to me to prevent now is there were so many times in combat that the first time I saw a type of injury, a type of patient was when I had to do it. Uh, and that's, that's terrifying. And so it just means so much to me to expose students and learners of any population, to things to say, Hey, I don't want you to be that person, that the first time you see some sort of mechanism of injury, or the first time you treat a pediatric patient, or let's make this clinical and, and relevant, the first time you treat a transgender patient, you know, diversity and simulation is, is huge. Cannot emphasize that enough. It should be in training and an educational experience. You shouldn't have a trial by fire when people's lives are on the line.
Deb:I could not agree more. I could not agree more. I was talking to, um, Amy from Akin, Amy Kawa. And, uh, we talked about, you know, they've got that haptic suction. And I remember the first time that I suctioned a patient being so frightened by, you know, just a simple thing like that. But, you know, you think about it, it's just so much easier to learn in simulation and then be prepared for the reality of the situation.
Remy:Yeah. And then Amy, uh, the obvious, disclaimer, my opinions are my own, this is, this is Remy talk, not institutions with which I have affiliated, but, uh, Amy and Adam from AFKIN are great humans. Uh, I've interacted with them really cool. Really cool people.
Deb:Yeah. I agree. I agree. What, what are your thoughts on simulation in the future? Where do you see things going in the, in the future?
Remy:So here at the, the innovation lab, that's, uh, where my team and I work at within the sizzle, this is a, a pretty common topic. Cuz we have a majorly, like all simulation centers, you have such a diverse workforce, right. Or people that sidestep into simulation, uh, or people who often say, you know, I, I fell into this as many of us have. I think the game is going to change when you have people whose background is simulation, who or healthcare simulation, when their education is healthcare simulation, we're seeing this all over, uh, master's degrees programs specifically in healthcare simulation. So when we have people who were brought up as academics, specifically in this field who specialize doing this, uh, I think we're gonna have such a crazy shift of, of innovation and contribution. And then not only that, but when we see those people collaborating with those with clinical experience, right? Cause like we talked about the idea of, of a tactical academic, just because you have a master's degrees in healthcare simulation doesn't mean you've ever innovated somebody, you know? So when we start combining practicing healthcare professionals with these people whose entire background is learning healthcare simulation, I can't wait to see where this goes.
Deb:No, I, I very much agree. I very much agree. Can you tell me a little bit about what your thoughts are on the use of virtual reality, augmented reality for PTSD, obviously being your history of being, you know, in the army and working for the, the DOD for so long, I'm sure that you've seen a lot of PTSD that exists in our population of, of veterans.
Remy:Yeah. I live with post traumatic stress disorder and chronic depression. I go to therapy weekly, highly advocate for that, a joke you and I have made before is how many, how many people are in therapy right now because people in their lives who did not go to therapy<laugh> right. So, uh, first of all, cannot de-stigmatize that enough? I live with it. It's a real thing, uh, with that comes again, the disclaimer of I can speak to my experience, but I, I can't represent the entire veteran population or, uh, anybody who has PTSD. Right. And I'm not just saying veterans, but, uh, as far as AR and virtual reality with it, I honestly, I don't know. I know one of, um, one of the, the biggest treatments for defer PTSD, according to the current literature, right, is a, it's called a mixed modal treatment. So things like dialectical behavioral therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, if you need pharmacotherapeutic intervention, highly individualized, multi domain way to treat this. I think there very well could be a future for augmented and virtual reality and improving, uh, mental health and even doing so specifically in the veteran population. I would maybe equate that to, uh, like telehealth, you know, like when I go to therapy, especially given the COVID pandemic, I don't go to my therapist's office. We do a zoom call once a week. So I see maybe there's possibilities there for AR and VR and being able to treat people in remote locations.
Deb:No, that's, I, I would have to agree. I would very much agree now, Remy, what can you share with us? What was going on with you and simulation during the pandemic?
Remy:Yeah, super interesting point. I had a unique experience because when the pandemic happened, I was still in the military doing simulation and it was, uh, it is high priority thing to prepare troops for doing their jobs in austere environments or combat environments. So we didn't have the luxury of, you know, oh, we'll have to just switch to remote or, you know, we'll just have to put things on hold, uh, until X days later, who knows what that is, right? We're we're still going through this. So we had to find ways to adapt and still train soldiers through simulation without any interruption to operations. So a lot of it was, uh, social distancing protocols, proper wearing of PPE, a massive down scaling of numbers of people we could train at a time, which meant way higher frequencies of training at Fort hood. We had to go through it's appropriately high volume amounts of COVID testing. I've been vaccinated since I wanna say December of, of 2020, maybe I got, I got the vaccine as, as early as I could. I think I had a unique experience in that. Uh, we had to find a way to safely keep going
Deb:Right now. Remy. Do, do you have any questions for me?
Remy:Yeah. How did you go from, uh, I know you're in MSN, we've talked about, you have a awesome nursing background. You have innovative SIM solutions and you're doing consulting, uh, and you're run and you're doing this podcast. Uh, what made you go from being such a, like a high operating nurse to a high operating nurse and an innovator in the field of healthcare simulation?
Deb:Well, thanks. Good question. So I, when I got into simulation, I realized that this was a great way to learn. And at first I was one of those people that was afraid of the simulator. I thought that the simulator was gonna know more than me and everyone would know. So once again, the imposter syndrome. And so when my position was eliminated at Chamberlin, I went ahead and opened Innovative Simsolutions with, you know, the mission of, of helping people learn and understand simulation. And I was listening to these podcasts by a guy by the name of John war Willow, and he has podcast called built to sell. And he talks about all these entrepreneurs and how they end up selling their business. So I started listening to his podcast and I was like, you know, I should see if I can do that because I know a lot of really, really great people in simulation who could share their story. And so once again, the simulation community, which is so generous, just like yourself, have been generous with their interviews. And it's just been one of those things for me, that's fun to do. I enjoy doing the interviews Forus was really helpful. Cause at first I started out with a, just kind of a cheap microphone and, and he helped me get set up with some things to make the quality of sound better. Uh, I have a phenomenal editor that's Shelly Houser. So that's, that's that part of it. And then created some classes on simulation. You can get'em either on my website or on lances, healthy simulation, and then frozen. And I started to work together as far as being able to partner to help someone that wanted to either start a simulation center or improve it. And we don't have, we don't have a, a vendor specific that we would help the help clients to get the best product is a return on investment for their per you know, what they, what they wanna get
Remy:That. So that's, that's awesome. I love what I'm hearing from from you is, uh, a lot of people don't know this, my undergrad was actually religion. Uh, I've studied world religions and it sounds so much like a, a Hindu concept called Dharma, Dharma. So in Hinduism, Dharma is one of like the aims of life and it is where you balance your ability with your passion. Right? We all have things that we're good at, but do we necessarily love it? And we all have things that we love, but like, oh man, you're not very good at that. Right.<laugh> so it sounds like, like you found your Dharma, you know, like you found a way to combine what you're, what you're good at and what you like.
Deb:Thanks. Thanks for it. It's been a fun, it's been a fun journey and I've met so many amazing people. If our listeners wanna get hold of you, is there somewhere special that they should reach out?
Remy:I'm not on any of the socials like Instagram or anything like that. I'm on, I'm on Twitter. I'm Remy the rockstar Remy with a Y uh, spelled how it sounds you can find me on LinkedIn Remy Roe. First name, last name. Uh, and my institution's website is sizzle.stanford.edu. That's where you can see the amazing team I work with.
Deb:Fantastic. Well, we will conclude this episode and happy simulating.
Outro:Thanks for joining us here at The Sim Cafe. We hope you enjoyed connect us at www.innovativesimsolutions.com and be sure to hit that like and subscribe button. So you never miss an episode of The Sim Cafe.