The Sim Cafe~ Interview with Kevin King

Kevin began his career as a land paramedic in rural Ontario, Canada. He quickly progressed to becoming a critical care flight paramedic working on one of the busiest helicopters in Canada. Medical simulation has been the driving focus in every step of Kevin King’s career as a paramedic, sales leader and entrepreneur. Inspired to act after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, he created the first mobile simulation program for paramedics in eastern Canada and founded a national alliance for simulation specialists and educators. In 2010, he was recognized by the prime minister of Canada for his emergency services leadership during the G8 summit. In 2018, King founded ECHO Healthcare, featuring a world-first approach to simulation service and support that earned the company global recognition. Kevin is a published researcher in the field of medical simulation, and is an accomplished seeker who has been invited around the globe to speak on the merits of simulation. 

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Transcript

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The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of anyone at Innovative Simsolutions or our sponsors.

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Intro: 1:24

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: 1:59

Welcome to another episode of The Sim Cafe. Today we're truly blessed to have Kevin King. Kevin began his career as a land paramedic in rural Ontario. He quickly progressed to becoming a critical care flight paramedic, working on one of the busiest helicopters in Canada. Medical simulation has been the driving focus in every step of Kevin King's career as a paramedic sales leader and entrepreneur Inspired to act after the September 11th terrorist attacks, he created the first mobile simulation program for paramedics in eastern Canada and founded a National Alliance for Simulation Specialists and educators. In 2010, he was recognized by the Prime Minister of Canada for his emergency services leadership. During the G eight summit in 2018, Kevin founded Echo Healthcare featuring a world first approach to simulation service and support that earned the company global recognition. Kevin is a published researcher in the field of medical simulation and is an accomplished seeker who has been invited around the globe to speak on the merits of simulation. Thank you, Kevin, for joining us, and why don't you, uh, tell our guests a little bit more about yourself and welcome.

Kevin: 3:16

Thanks so much, Deb. Well, first of all, I'm really honored and thrilled to be invited onto the podcast and to share some of my journey with you and with your listeners as well. I'm a big fan of the podcast now. I've been listening as is continued to evolve. I'm excited to see where the podcast goes, and I'm excited about the guests that you've had a already and I'm humbled to be included among them. My career, as you said, I I started as a paramedic, but before that, if you'll indulge me just a little bit, because I had a, a little bit of a, a rocky road even getting into post-secondary education because I really didn't know what I wanted when I was in high school. You know, I was trying to figure out how to turn skateboarding into a full-time job and a career. And, uh, as I mentioned to you earlier, I think there's only been one person that's been successful at doing that. So I quickly realized, although because I was a stubborn teenager and had to go through the dropping outta school, coming to terms with my own ego and really trying to create a driving force where I needed to be. So I actually had all these crazy events happen around me in that period of time. So I started skiing with the ski patrol, which was a volunteer job. When I did that, I quickly realized that caring for people and having the ability to change the outcome, even in there, was largely fractures, those types of soft tissue injuries on the ski hill. I thought, Wow, this is really something that I'd like to get into and invest my time and my energy. The problem was in high school, I dropped all my maths and sciences in grade nine because I thought, well, who's gonna need that stuff later on in life? And as it turns out, that person was me. So I had to go back and because of a work schedule, I was maintaining just regular working in a factory. I had to go back and take courses in the daytime. And it was a very humbling experience when you were that much older than high school students to go back and get my high school sciences and get my high school math, you know, up to snuff so that I could be able to apply to ambulance colleges. So successfully did that, and I was on my way in terms of ambulance program. So I applied to all the ambulance programs and, and got in. When I graduated from ambulance school, there were no jobs. And our instructors, even in college back in 94 and 95 were saying, We don't know why you're taking this program because the best you can probably hope for is to work as a volunteer. I didn't let that deter me because I started to understand early in my career that I wanted to align my energy and focus and really use them as driving elements of success in my career. So I attempted to do that. I packed up my car and I drove around the province of Ontario, which is massive. It can take days and days and days to drive around Ontario, Canada, where I'm from originally, and look for a job and true to my instructor's, I guess advice, all I could find was volunteer jobs. So I undertook one of those volunteer jobs and I, I started working as a volunteer at a very small ambulance service called Noble Tin, and that's just outside Canada's Wonderland. For those that know where Canada's Wonderland is, it would just opened, uh, around then, and that that was why we needed to have additional ambulance coverage. So that was before the, the dreaded Y2K, and everybody remembers the dreaded Y two K. And that was probably my first instance of simulation because we had to sit around and figure out, well, what's gonna happen between 99 and 2000? You'll probably remember, um, cell phones were very new at the time. Not very many people had them. Um, so do we, How do we make computer systems redundant? There was still a lot of paper filing back then, so can we make copies in case, you know, the dreaded end of the world happens a y2k? And of course, over the course of that time, it was really a non-event, but I do remember being pretty fearful around that period of time. So that really was my first exposure into simulation. I continued to evolve my ambulance career, and I quickly enrolled in the critical care Flight paramedic program that was helicopter based in Toronto, Canada. And as you already alluded to, I worked at the Critical Care Flight paramedic for a number of years and was exposed to actually during my oskie to one of the very first, what's termed now, high fidelity bells and whistles and, and sounds and lights and seizures. I was exposed to that during my first certification process as a critical care flight paramedic. And as someone who really wanted to devote my life to lifelong learning and undertake that journey, I thought, Wow, this is, this is really cool. So I did that, and it was a, it was a bit of a shock to me, as I'm sure it was for everybody that got exposed to simulation, w a clinician and a clinical educator. So there was those times as well when we had that epiphany moment to say, Wow, technology really is something that can be utilized a little bit differently than how I had seen growing up, watching TV and robots and the$6 million man and the bionic woman. That was as close to the exposure to simulation, I guess, as, as we got. So I really wanted to learn more about medical simulation. So I was fortunate enough to go down. I, I wrote for the fellowship to go down to the Institute for Medical Simulation, which is the joint program offered between Harvard and mit, which is the Center for Medical Simulation as it's, as it's now known. And that experience was fundamental to me. It changed my life, it changed the d the trajectory of where my career took me. It turned me from someone who had these great ideas, didn't really know how I wanted to apply them. I was managing part-time, the simulation program within the ambulance. So I know that, you know, the question is, the journey into simulation was, I, I used to think non-traditional, but having heard many of your guests, I know non-traditional is the order of the day. So for me, it was, we've got this cool technology sitting over in a corner. Can you figure out how to use it? We've actually built it into a 50 foot trailer. We've put a helicopter interior into one side of the trailer, a land ambulance interior into the other side of the trailer, and the middle of that trailer, we turned into an emergency department. So Kevin, figure out how to do this, learned this technology. So I put my head in the books and started turning switches on and figuring out how to use simulation technology. So that exposed me to the technology, it exposed me to the challenges from clinical education at that point. So, like yourself, I've been a lifelong clinical educator from a very early time, from the time I was on the ski patrol, I thought, how can I share this knowledge and this experience and this fund really that impacts patient lives at the end of the day? Well, the easy answer is to become a clinical educator. And I shouldn't say easy answer because it takes time to get there. But I found that the most fulfilling for me, in fact, between my ski patrol experience and my college experience, I actually lived in a car for a short period of time because I was so committed to undertaking the journey between what was volunteering and what was getting paid for a job. And I don't tell that story to, to generate any sympathy. I tell it because it was motivating for me. And it was really powerful for me to undertake that and to utilize that experience, to start to build that foundation for me that culminated in this experience. I had in 2004 during the inaugural Institute for Medical Simulation at the institute, and met some lifelong friends, um, and still keep in touch with all of them, including the instructors, many of whom I'm considered to be mentors of mine.

Deb: 10:53

That is a very, very inspirational story. I'm gonna ask you a question. How old were you when you went back to school for the sciences? And I'm asking this because I think that some of our listeners may have family members, loved ones who, you know, could have been in this situation and be inspired by it.

Kevin: 11:11

I was 24 years old when I went back and I felt like a fossil when I went back to school. I felt old. I felt at a place. I felt, as I've learned further in life what imposter syndrome actually means. I still don't feel like the person who should be doing this. In my office here, I actually have my grade 10 report card, and it's abysmal. Anyone who looks at that report card looks and says, My goodness, they gave out Ds e and Fs. I'm like, Well, thank you very much for the validation. Yes, they did. But the reason I have it here, because when we've got new folks coming into interview, and when I, when I have chats, I, I try and be in transparent as I can. My heart is, is truly on my, my sleeve when it comes to my journey, when it comes to how I want to continue to help and improve patient outcomes through it is what we do. But when people look at it, they go, My gosh, what did you feel when you got that report card? If I can come from a place, and when I was in grade 10, if you look at the commentary on that report card, you will not see here's how we want to help Kevin. Here's how we want to support Kevin. Here's avenues available for help and support for Kevin. It says, This is not the course for him. It says, needs so much help. It says, Focus is not there. It says, do anything except what you're doing now. These are real words. This is, does anybody who wants to drop bike and can see this report card? And I thought, Wow, what a terrible thing. Retrospectively, I'm not saying because it's me, But if you were to read that and go, how did you overcome some of those? I'm, I'm describing the journey in terms of how I overcome it. Well, now I look at those types of elements as challenges. I use them as my superpower to try and invest in people to try and bring out the best in people and really help educate people along that marriage of focus and energy to get where they need to get to. And that's what landed me very unlikely, at least I thought at the time in this Center for Medical Simulation in my program, I was the only non-physician that was there. So talk about imposter syndrome. In fact, when I walked into to Harvard that day, I looked at all the binders that were lined up and they put your name tag on as you do it at conferences and shows and stuff. And I noticed doctor, doctor, doctor, and there's Kevin, there's me. And I thought, I don't belong here. I don't belong here. And I really had a moment with myself, and I was actually Dr. Jenny Rudolph, who's a phenomenal mentor to me, even from a, from a distance and throughout the years who said, You, you belong here and this is going to be a phenomenal week and it's gonna be a really exciting journey. And Dr. Robert Simon, Dr. Dan Ramer, Dr. Jim Gordon, they were all instrumental in helping me that day, that hour in ensuring I felt like I belonged.

Deb: 13:57

That warms my heart. Thank you for sharing that. We're gonna have to get a picture of that report card and put it on social media.

Kevin: 14:04

I'll share it with you. Yeah,

Deb: 14:06

Yeah. Okay. Well, I love your journey. Can you share your favorite or most impactful simulation story with our listeners?

Kevin: 14:15

I would love to. Following along the journey at CMSs Center for Medical Simulation, the joint between MIT and Harvard, the opportunity that all the participants have to participate in really practical applications was not something I expected. I thought, well, if you're going to a place that's got those high load names on the hall, you're gonna be sitting with your nodes buried in a book for eight hours a day. And, you know, trying to listen to really, really intelligent people spout information that was maybe gonna be difficult for me to understand. The opposite ended up being true. So we were thrust into clinical situations, we were thrust into simulation based clinical situations so that we could learn how to educate, utilizing simulation as not just a tool, but really more importantly as a technique. And for me, that came with, with exposure. On our second day in the program, I was a participant with two other members of my class, uh, Dr. Ron Levy and Dr. Martin Eon, who were not just my classmates, have since become my confidants as well. And we went through a scenario where we were brought into a CT scan room, and I was in charge of the airway. I had been assigned to be in charge of the airway, and all three of us had been in charge of various other parts of, of managing the, the condition and the humbling experience for me. And the scenario was designed, my, my advanced apologies if the case is still being used, because I know that the center really loves their, their cases and they don't wanna spoil it. But for me, it's such a powerful statement. There was a mix up between a drug and sailing, which is, you know, as broadly as I'll as I'll talk about it. The design of the scenario is such that as providers we're supposed to recognize it and, um, and do something about it. Suffice to say, because we all got so focused in our lanes and started going down this road, we focused on our own jobs. I focused only on the airway, and it took us to a very raw place. So for me, it took me to a raw place where I was forced to defend my potential. Hey guys, I only deal with the airway. So the fact that the patient is decompensated and the fact that the patient, you know, did not do well, right up to and including dying in front of us wasn't my problem. And here were clinical educators. All of us are clinical educators. So I immediately upon debriefing and everybody else that was around the scenario, and it wasn't just the, the three of us that were actors, there was other confederates, there was other folks from the program who were there. The fact that we were so viscerally emotionally tied to what we were doing meant that we created these mini silos. We didn't communicate. And we're thinking at the end of a, my goodness, I'm a clinical educator and if this is difficult for me, I can't imagine how difficult this would be to overcome for a student. So during the debrief, Deb, to tell you I was humbled would be to put a blend. It was a second time. Over the course of that week, I thought, Gosh, I I don't belong here. I need to get on a plane and, and just go home. I, I don't think this is it. But that was where I fully understood what teaching and learning and debriefing in a safe environment meant. Because what we were met with from the phenomenal experts at the program was that's why we do these cases. That's why we get involved in these cases, because these impactful events that happen to us, happen to everybody. The ability to talk and debrief at the end of it is truly Kevin, in my case, where the learning's going to happen. And these co confederates with me, co-actors with me, all of whom among many are shoulders of giants that I've stood upon, all of them, I, I wouldn't be where I am without their guidance, without their direction, really helped make me feel personally like I belonged. And that's why I say over the course of that week, it changed my life. It, it absolutely changed my life. And, and that actually culminated in 2010 where I was fortunate enough to be one of the participants in sim wars. And sim Wars was a, a contest, if you remember that Dr. Hakuta and Dr. Andy Godwin had put on. And so I represented Team Canada in 2010, and it was in Arizona at I M S H and we won. So same thing, I was with these other, you notice how I melded two stories into one there, and I apologize to your listeners ahead of time. I know you said one, but for me, it culminated in there because in this packed audience full of people, we had this really stressful case. We did proper role assignment, we did really great communication. It was people who I had worked with an emergency physician, a respiratory therapist, and a couple of nurses who I had worked with in Toronto, but not day by day. And we really put together this, you know, this award-winning performance. And that's not a shameless self-promotion, That's just me saying that's when it all came together for me. And I was asked the question in debriefing by Dr. Acuta to say, Why, why do we do this? What advice do you have, Kevin? What's it, what's it all about? And I said, For me, fundamentally, when I start thinking to myself, it's about the patient, it's not about the ego of the provider, it's not about the training plus minus that we've had to get where we get to, and I believe this is a statement I made, if it stops becoming about the patient and it starts becoming about your ego in whatever way, shape, or form, discipline, nonspecific, then it's my personal belief, you're doing the wrong thing. I really, truly, fundamentally believe it's about the patient. And that is kind of my, my most impactful one story into the next. But I was very humbled by the experience. I felt rotten early on. I felt exposed. I felt like I was not enough. And as I said, these amazing human beings, I was able to stand on their shoulders and really challenge what I, I believed I could be. And then with their support and the, the support of a a great society, a great network, really achieved what I set out to

Deb: 20:09

Wonderful. Story. And I can relate to that moment of shame when we all have, we're defending our position of where we came from and, and to see how healthcare has evolved with psychological safety and, you know, hoping and praying that things will continue to improve in healthcare. I think right now we're in a, a bit of a crisis, you know, with all the,

Kevin: 20:31

I Agree, all the different things that are going on.

Deb: 20:33

But, um, where do you see the future of simulation going?

Kevin: 20:39

Oh man, I would want it to be much more democratized. As much simulation education that you can get to the biggest number of people is going to impact the largest number of patients at the end of'em. Because that's the continuum, isn't it? How can we utilize not just technology, but a combination of technology and techniques to create the suspension of disbelief and, and my personal belief, increase the realism. And, and I know medical simulation as an industry co-opted that term to say, well, fidelity equals real well, to me, real equals real. I've seen hundreds if not thousands of patients over the course of my career. And I think if you can create training in such a way that you remove all the barriers or as many barriers as possible to get more people trained, to the degree of whatever you define as your level of excellence, to make sure that the message is getting delivered for me, I believe that's where, where simulation needs to go, democratizing it means breaking down those barriers, breaking down those walls, and giving everybody who is invested in clinical education equal opportunity to get there. My big motivating factor for me is even working on a helicopter as hard as we tried, we could really impact one patient life at a time. And through the continuum of simulation, I believe that we can impact hundreds of patient lives, quote unquote, at a time. But if you've got education set up properly and you're backing it up with what you believe is and what's been accepted as simulation that is accessible, then you impact so many more lives at the end of the continuum. But it dawned on me after every tough call that we did was if I could somehow compartmentalize this experience, share it with somebody, create a case so that you understood the stress level I was going through, you understood the decision making that I had to do, you understood the avenues of decision that I undertook, then that would really be something

Deb: 22:49

Excellent. Excellent. Kevin, And, and I'm gonna share with you, first of all, I consider you a disruptor. Tell me a little bit is entrepreneur, to entrepreneur your journey into all the anxiety that goes along with, Hey, I think I'm gonna start a business<laugh>

Kevin: 23:06

Frightening, terrifying. To your point, talk about imposter syndrome and really believing you are now who you say you are, but then when other people start subscribing to your journey, it's a big, big responsibility, not one that I take lightly. And for me personally, that journey was reflecting, going, Wow, I've had such an amazing career. I've had such an amazing experience as I've come up. How can I best share that? How can I share that journey? And I came to the realization in 2017, 2018, that the best way for me to share that journey was to undertake it on my own. And I surrounded myself with phenomenal partners. I was very, very fortunate that they were able to join me, believe my vision, which I'm sure sounded a little bit maniacal when I undertook it, to talk about how I wanted to change some of the elements that exist in the industry already and then introduce new techniques, technologies and bring my experience to them as well. But it's a terrifying journey. You've heard that axiom burn the boats, they're behind you. So I cashed in everything I cashed in my life savings, um, which most people hear that story go, Wow, that's absolutely crazy that you would, that you would do that. Why did you do it? Well, because I so passionately believed in what this journey was going to be, I so passionately believed that there was going to be something that I and the amazing human beings who I surround myself with have undertaken as well. So my partner in crime is z ney undertook that journey with me early. And as a partner in the business and foundationally for the first couple of years of business, you really live through those dark times. Don't you think, Wow, are we doing the right thing? Are we making the right choices? Are we surrounding ourselves with the right people? We did that with, you know, with a handful of people in 20 17, 20 18. It was difficult to pay people. We certainly didn't pay ourselves for a long, long time while we got that journey going. And I am humbled every single day with the people who work here. I'm in love and passionate about our customers. I'm in love and passionate about the people who deliver on our promise of innovation, on our promise of product excellence to our end user. They're the heroes. I'm not the hero, it's all of them who are heroes. It's all of them who I have profound, profound gratitude for. So the short answer is terrifying, enlightening, satisfying, and repeat that cycle. As you continue of to evolve and you continue to grow, once your focus is aligned, your energy will follow. So where your focus goes, your energy will go, where your energy goes, your focus will go. Doesn't mean you don't make mistakes. I've made many. It doesn't mean that you don't have to backtrack and sometimes change direction. I think the ability to be resilient and then the ability to dust yourself off and recover are superpowers really for an entrepreneur. And I know I'm telling you things that, that you know, because you've lived some of these elements yourself, but those have been the most powerful driving motivators for me. Put your nose to the stone, take the advice of all these great people that are in your orbit and continue to evolve your journey. Make something really special, make something really memorable. I still, selfishly, because I'm a clinician, so I still practice a lot of clinical education, so to speak. So I do live demos with customers, with customers, come into the shop here, I'm quite happy to, uh, to get involved to the point where my team will say, That's enough, Kevin. You, you can stand off to the side. You probably have more important things to do. And I go, Darn it. Yeah, that was really fun for me, but it's still my number one passion. Is that

Deb: 26:50

Very, very nice. So can you tell us a little bit about what happened to you and your company during the pandemic?

Kevin: 26:57

Covid was frightening, as you remember. It started, and I think it was right after Covid in 20, was it 2020? And we had only been around as a company for, we had only been to one. Im h before that as a company. So I'll tell you transparently, Deb, it was terrifying because nobody knew what was going to happen. We were all really absorbing information at the same pace that everybody else got it. So my immediate thought was, well, right, we still believe and we understand that education is going to have to take place. Let's reach out to our customers, let's reach out to our partners and find out what customers are saying and how best to identify and service their needs at the same time, because we were undertaking some 3D printing and we have some really cool mold making capabilities and that type of thing. I read journals every day. I read articles every day. And one of the ones I read was how potentially you could split a ventilator figure so you could ventilate two patients at the exact same time. You know, it would need this crazy t piece to do it. We manufactured some test pieces, somet pieces, ventilator splitters that I downloaded specifications from through, uh, some physician groups that I had subscribed to and been a part of. And then we did mass print runs of those in 3D printing. Uh, and I offered them to our local hospitals here, um, for free just to say, you know, we wanna be a good partner where we wanna try and support whatever journey it is that we're all on. It's scary. Uh, so that was the first thing that we did. And then from there, we really doubled down and focused on what we were doing internally. We took out so much feedback from our customers. We were talking to customers every single day saying, How can we best support you here? Uh, as you know, we make mannequins, we've got digital products as well. We've got service and support products. So trying to maintain the level of intimacy with our team was tantamount for me to success. And we wanted to be a good corporate citizen and we wanted to be a good partner to our customers. So we basically got on with them early, often every day and said, How can we support your needs? We did a lot more virtual webinars. We did a lot more virtual. Well, everybody did a lot more virtual meeting. No one was interested in seeing anybody face to face. So we switched the entire model to, to really that digital model. Can you imagine nobody had heard the word zoom outside of, you know, what a sports car did before the, before the pandemic. Well, then Zoom became a verb throughout the pandemic and we certainly utilized it to, uh, to a large degree. We created and developed and commercialized our own app that's available on the Android store in the Apple store. Largely in part because we wanted to stay connected digitally to our customers and recognizing and realizing that we weren't gonna be able to see them face to face. So,

Deb: 29:44

Excellent. Thank you. Now, can you share with our listeners the biggest thing you'd like them to know? Something when you learned it, it changed the way that you practiced essentially a personal aha moment.

Kevin: 29:57

I think the, the personal aha moment came when I was practicing as a flight paramedic, and I had been exposed to varying degrees of simulation. I thought to myself, The world will unfold before you and you're not gonna have any worries. Well, as you know, the opposite is true. The more you know, the more you realize you, you don't know. And so that epiphany came to me after the events of nine 11, a better way to prepare someone mentally, emotionally, spiritually, Let's be honest, to hear information like there's potentially three 4,000 patients there. There's very limited resources responding. Could you make a simulation around that? Yeah, you, you could. The epiphany for me came when the transition between that Red Cape syndrome and it was immersively Limited for me. I've always undertook that I wanted to drink from the fire hose of education of learning. I become passionate about it and share as much as I possibly could. But the epiphany came for me when I thought, man, with these mistakes that I'm making on the helicopter with these errors, with, with these learning opportunities, I only get to share them with my partner and with whoever happened to be back at the base at the time, I don't get to share them more broadly. Marrying that with my experience at CMS and further and with these phenomenal individuals who I've, I've mentioned who helped me along my journey, the biggest aha moment was it's not about me, it's about the patient. It's not about the clinical educator themselves, it's about the patient at the end of the continuum. There's a lot that happens in the middle of that. The clinical educator needs to be well prepared. They need to have an appropriate lesson plan. They need to be able to use the right technology, the right techniques, the right blend of, of curriculum integration. Then the message needs to be translated and delivered in such a way that the most amount of people can benefit from it, because then they're gonna be the ones who go out and treat patients. So I'm really, really crazy about patient care. I, I am and the ability, at least in my mind, and it's my belief that by creating opportunities for multiple people to get educated, utilizing those combinations of techniques and technologies, that's a reason to celebrate. It's about how I can share information with Deb, how her and I can collaborate and get that information to our clinical educators, who then in turn can get it out to our students. For me, it's priceless. It really is. That's priceless for me to think and to, to humbly believe that we play a role in that and that, uh, that I play a role in that. I can tell you I'm forever grateful. I've got a lot of gratitude as a result of that.

Deb: 32:41

Thank you. And Kevin, the words that I hear in my mind when I hear you speak are care, empathy, and compassion. And I'm sure that people love working for you and with you.

Kevin: 32:53

And thanks very much, Deb. Again, I'm, I'm so humbled to be included in the conversation of some of the folks that you've mentioned and on your podcast as well. And I think those are the words that drive me every day. Compassion, intimacy, and that's intimacy with our employees, intimacy with our customers so that we can actually try and get through as much noise as we can and deliver products, deliver techniques, deliver advice that will hopefully help along their journey. The the flip side is I actually believe that what we're doing, even as societies, clinical educators, such as yourself and experts such as yourself, is that we're impacting so many more through these elements of, of techniques that we've developed, of research that we've developed, that we're able to share more broadly. And I, for one, can hardly wait to see where the industry and where the society and where the improvements in patient care and the advents of new techniques and technology to make it more accessible for everybody around the world. I can hardly wait to see where that goes.

Deb: 33:51

Thank you. Do you have any questions for me?

Kevin: 33:54

Yeah, I do actually. And you've heard me mention the word gratitude and that word is, it's one that I have an interesting relationship with. When you're young, you think, well, gratitude is, I get something, I'm immediately grateful for it, it's a material transaction. But I've come to realize that gratitude for me anyways, has come by way of, of experiences that I've had, of, of interactions that I've had, of people I've been blessed to meet in the communities that I've had the opportunity to be a part of. So I'm wondering, Deb, what the word gratitude means for you.

Deb: 34:23

Thanks, Kevin. Gratitude for me is thanking people and I actually was worked at a hospital, St. Alexus where they had a practice, Quin Studer, of writing a thank you note every week to a colleague. So I got into the habit of doing that and then a couple of years ago I started with the practice of writing at least one thank you note to someone who has done something kind for me, handwritten, not just emailing, make sure that I hand write it out, mail it to'em, and just practicing it constantly. And I actually have write in front of me here, my little gratitude journal that I write in every day on the things that I'm thankful for because, you know, what are you thankful for, right? I think there's a little song. What are you thankful for? Yeah,<laugh>,

Kevin: 35:12

That's right, that's right.

Deb: 35:14

Positivity and recognizing the blessings that you have been bestowed upon are your friends, your family. I have a, a dear friend Kathy Gingrich, who brings me to that place, uh, many times, right? So those are some of the things that I practice in my personal life.

Kevin: 35:34

Well, thanks for that. And that's, that's a great, great answer. And wow, I subscribe to the same theory. I've got a book beside me that I try and try every single day. It's not always successful, but trying every day to be able to write those things that I'm grateful for as well. And I think it standards a good foundation, doesn't it, for how you're going to evolve, grow as a professional, grow as someone who's got a lot to share and continue to evolve our journey.

Deb: 36:03

Absolutely. With that, I appreciate your time and if our listeners wanna get ahold of you, how would they do that?

Kevin: 36:10

They can get ahold of me a one to two ways. You, you can always call my cell phone and that's a(941) 730-0619 or you can reach me online@infoechosimulation.com.

Deb: 36:24

Thank you. Thank you so much. And happy simulating

SimGHOSTS Tag: 36:29

SimGHOSTS is the world's only organization dedicated solely to supporting those who operate healthcare simulation technology. If you wanna be part of a healthcare culture where people are empowered to use simulation technology to improve learner and patient outcomes, join SimGHOSTS today. Learn more by visiting our website and connect with us via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn details in the show notes.

Outro: 37:01

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