Dr. Jayne Smitten describes her history in simulation and her current role as The President of SSH. This Episode is sponsored by Innovative SimSolutions, the simulation turnkey solution.

Jayne Smitten is the President of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH), an international organization dedicated to improving healthcare through simulation education, training, and research. 

Throughout her career, Smitten has been a strong advocate for advancing the use of simulation in healthcare education and has worked to promote the integration of simulation across multiple healthcare disciplines. She has presented at numerous national and international conferences on simulation-based education and training.

As the President of SSH, Smitten is committed to advancing the field of healthcare simulation and promoting the use of simulation to improve patient safety, quality of care, and healthcare outcomes. She works collaboratively with other healthcare leaders, educators, and researchers to develop and promote best practices in simulation education, training, and research.

Innovative SimSolutions
Your turnkey solution provider for medical simulation programs, sim centers & faculty design.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Innovative SimSolutions.
Your turnkey solution provider for medical simulation programs, sim centers & faculty design.

Transcript

Disclaimer: 0:00

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 Sim Solutions or our sponsors.

Innovative Sim Solution Ad: 0:14

This Podcast is being sponsored by Innovative SimSolutions, Deb Tauber the founder of Innovative Sim Solutions and the host of The Sim Café invites you to visit the website and see the coaching services the team can provide. Innovative SimSolutions provides a turnkey solution to help save you time and money. Contact us at Innovative Sim Solutions and see how we can help you grow.

Intro: 0:35

Welcome to The Sim Cafe, a podcast produced by the team at Innovative Sim Solutions, edited by Shelly Houser. Join our host, Deb Tauber and co-host Jerrod Jeffries as they sit 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: 1:16

Welcome to another episode of the Sim Cafe. And I'm Deb Tauber here with my co-host Jerrod Jeffries. And today we have Dr. Jayne Smitten as our guest. Thank you so much for being here. Would you like us to refer to you as Dr. Smitten or

Jayne: 1:31

Jayne is just fine. Yeah. Thank you. Thank You.

Deb: 1:34

Thank you. Thank you. So why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Jayne: 1:40

Well, Mahalo, thank you, first of all in Hawaiian for this opportunity to be part of The Sim Cafe, and I have my Java here, and so I'm ready to have a nice discussion with you. For starters, I work for HPU, which is Hawaii Pacific University, a private nonprofit, uh, university recognized for its diversity of student body. There's about 65 countries involved. So we are in a base location of Honolulu, Hawaii. I'm looking up my window right now,<laugh>, but other locations and campuses in Hawaii, loa. And then there's one in, uh, Maka Puu, which has to do with the marine sciences area. And we are in a stage right now of realignment and basically transformation of some of our colleges. So we're going through some changes related to our, you know, specific areas in the colleges. So currently I am the College of Health and Society Associate Dean, the professor, and the interim public health chair, along with the director of the experiential sim center in transition. So you're asking me, first of all about my background and it is very eclectic. I'm originally from Canada, and my foundations are in nursing and, and education. And my journey has really involved a lot of weaving into a variety of medical and interprofessional groups involving, you know, all the applied healthcare disciplines, so EMTs, paramedics, uh, fire department, respiratory, all these people that were involved in our disaster planning and disaster services with the programs that I was involved in in Canada. And we were using simulation in our early days of my career. And so this includes working with all types of educational technologies in the healthcare environments. And I was working in the hospital institutions as well as hospital institutions with academic affiliations with the hospital. So that led me also eventually into the university setting. So it was involvement with the traditional, like the brick and mortar type of educational environments, but also areas that incorporated hybrid approach. And as well, I had some exposure and working in the online university where it was anywhere, any place, any, anytime. So<laugh> that, and that seems to be where it's going these days, uh, with a lot of the hybrid and, and online post covid.

Jerrod: 3:54

And, and one question actually for you there is, coming from Canada, Hawaii and having this disaster preparedness, especially within simulation, were there different disciplines or thoughts you had to bring into of how you structured that process or framework into what you'd be prepared for?

Jayne: 4:11

I think what you're referring to is the various disciplines that are involved in the actual uh, disaster planning. And it was very similar in the sense of it was a really collaborative effort of the community for these kinds of programs and for these events. And we have a tri-annual event here in Honolulu, for example, that involves all various universities and all the disciplines related to medicine, nursing, social work, bringing in the military, utilizing the, the actual airport as our disaster scene. And we've had some incredible experiences with that here. We had similar experiences in Canada when I was involved with the disaster planning for the province at that time, and they had the same sort of, uh, collaborative approach and ensured that we were addressing outcome measures to make a difference in the community for being prepared. So it was a, an experiential and incredibly impactful experience for all the disciplines that were involved. Yeah, s ure.

Deb: 5:12

How did you get from Canada to Hawaii? I mean, like, it's almost everyone's dream. I wanna live in Hawaii.<laugh>.

Jayne: 5:17

Well, I started off in Canada. It's a clinical nurse specialist, and I was approached by the A T L S program, and I'll get into a little bit of the history of that after. But essentially my journey led me to being recruited here by the dean at the time, the College of Health and Society, to really help with the building of the simulation program in the future with our college. And so that led me here in addition to, I had family here, but it was something that, uh, was the spearhead to make a difference in the whole world of simulation. And I was excited because this is where my journey took me to, and I could make a difference here, hopefully with the help of, uh, you know, leadership and support and the, the infrastructure in place. But I, I started out as a clinical nurse specialist, as I mentioned, with the A T L S program in Alberta many moons ago. And the A T L S program was based out of the American College of Surgeons, as you know, and it was focusing on the first critical hour. So A T L S was designed similar to what we have with other programs, didactic lectures, experiential skill stations, and animal lab, and then actually involving evaluations for trauma assessment. So we utilize patients as well in these situations. Patient volunteers, similar to what we do nowadays with, uh, moulage and, and standardized and simulated patients, but long before the standards of practice were in place like they are now, which is, I mean, incredible improvement of what we're doing in our, in our programs for healthcare. So through A T L S I worked through the diversity of specializations, and I was led by a, a visionary, just a really visionary emergency physician who was exploring high fidelity simulation at the time. And he and a group of physicians, specialized physicians went down to Stanford and worked with Dr. Gaba, and they were all just mesmerized by the potential of the future of simulation for medical and health healthcare education. So as a result of that and the funding initiatives, we developed the first Western Canadian Telehealth and Simulation Center in Edmonton. And I was appointed the regional director and we did the business plan, and basically we launched. And so it was an incredible opportunity. I was just in the right place at the right time with supportive, you know, infrastructure as well as leaders and c-suite and leaders and all the faculty and staff. So it was What year was this? This was in the late nineties. Okay. Yeah. So it's been, I've been around for a while,<laugh>, but these experiences also led me into consulting and I was doing some team consulting up north related to, you know, technologies and education and then into academia where they were increasing the usage of sim in the nursing education department. And my journey took me also to work on my doctorate, working and focusing on the area of, uh, simulation with healthcare and nursing, and an opportunity of working in Doha, Qatar, building on the design and development of the simulation center there embedding, uh, simulation in their curriculum scenarios. So it leads me back to what you said orig or asked me originally, Deb, in relation to how did I get to Hawaii. All these experience led me to being recruited here. And then eventually my employment, through my employment and my working in consulting. I've been working at four universities, including the one that was contracted with Middle East, university of Calgary, Qatar, and now I'm in Hawaii.

Deb: 8:43

Thank you. Thank you. And I have to say, I did take a T l s, so I'm very familiar with the course. It's a tough course.<laugh> A nd why don't you share a little bit about your role as the current president of SSH? Yeah.

Jayne: 8:59

All the simulation-based experiences and the challenges and all the solution finding endeavors have just led me to be, become the president of Society for Simulation and in healthcare. And I am really honored and I'm looking forward to building upon our s ssh what's been done in the past by our pre predecessors and what we can do in the future. I'm looking forward to this being a very productive year because we're focusing on the strategic planning and the objectives and really putting together what we require or towards outcomes to make a difference in our society. So that's one of the, the big areas and the themes that we're addressing from our strategic plan. I can remember them all. Advocacy, research and innovations, credentialing and membership education and learning. And then finally, what we all need to think about is the sustainability and growth of our organization

Deb: 9:52

Off to a good start on that. Yeah,

Jayne: 9:55

It's, it's gonna be a big year,<laugh> getting that underway because it's a five year strategic plan, and we haven't had this happen for a while because of the covid setting us back a bit. But this will make a difference. I'm sure we'll have some direction and we'll actually have some actionable plans in place to start making, uh, some headway in relation to what we need to do moving forward in our society.

Deb: 10:18

And if our listeners wanna help you in this mission, what specifically can we do? How can we support?

Jayne: 10:26

This? Well, essentially reaching out, networking, uh, being part of the committee structures, learning more about the simulation and how they can advocate in their areas. That's a big area because advocacy is where we're gonna make a difference and actually get the teeth into what we require in our communities. And just doing, being active and the action items that you as a, as a member want to do, and making sure that you're using your expertise and area and getting out there. We have so many incredible simulationist talents out there that we can draw from. And, and we just need to, um, really reach out to those people and get them involved and be involved. So I think with you doing what you're doing in your Sim Cafe, Deb and Jerrod, it's incredibly beneficial to get the message out there and what we can do for the future.

Deb: 11:22

Thank you so much. Thank you. Would you like to share your favorite or most impactful simulation story with our guests?

Jayne: 11:29

You know, I was thinking about this and it was, uh, it was related to one simulation scenario that I was so proud of being a part of when I was in Doha. And it was definitely way out of our wheel base and in terms of knowing the Islamic culture and the nuances. And it was an end of life scenario, we did, and we did it on our simulator, and we actually created, you know, a look and everything of a, an Islamic man. And, uh, we had the family setting. It was all done in a hotel room, or hotel room, a hospital room,

Deb: 11:59

<laugh>,<laugh>.

Jayne: 12:00

Anyway, we did a lot of reading and researching and reaching out to find more information about it, including the Koran and the is, which is the Islamic text, and talking with a, any mom, which is like the priest in in the Muslim, Muslim religious leaders. And we wanted to create as authentic a scenario as we could and making sure that it would impact, you know, both our faculty and our students. And it really did impact them. We were inspired by this, and I'm just thinking of the infinite possibilities of scenarios just because of this one example and how we can create a, a very authentic and effective experiential learning for our students with these kinds of, these kinds of scenarios. And we were fortunate that we submitted it for a, an abstract actually in Portugal, which is where CSUN is this, this summer. And we were in Queenbraugh in the University of Queenraugh and we've presented it there, and they had our, even our, um, headphones with Spanish and Portuguese to translate for the ones that weren't getting it, if you will. And it was worthwhile because a lot of people in that conference were able to translate a lot of the key messages and simulations. So I'm looking forward to seeing whether or not we do the same thing at this conference.

Deb: 13:15

Thank you. That's, I I really believe that end of life simulations need to be performed at all levels. I think that in medicine we go into the fetal thinking we're gonna save lives and stamp out diseases, but at the end of the day, the circle of life is the circle of life and it is going to end. And how do you prepare, you know, learners, whether whatever culture it is to, to be with someone at that time, to be with the family, to be with the patient, to, once again, it's not, what's the matter with you, it's what matters to you.

Jayne: 13:52

And it's all creating the environment. And this is where you have to include the humanistic part of it, because it's not saying that simulation's gonna solve all the problems, but incorporating and making it, uh, versatile enough to address these humanistic issues, but also address how and what needs to be done and why are we doing it. Right.

Jerrod: 14:13

And I think just to, to latch on there too, I mean, when you bring up Portugal and CSAM, especially within your role within SSH, now it's showing how global, this not only the industry, but the importance of standards and vocabulary and terminology and how this is, I don't wanna say spreading, but there's becoming more of, um, a consistency not only within North America, but of course globally. And then you're seeing everybody kind of pitch in differently, but all to the greater good of, of not only society, but for healthcare simulation in general. And to hear your background, Jayne, of course, Canada and then Middle East, and then now one of, on some islands, it's going into such a spread of how everybody's contributing in a holistic way in so many different ways and facets. That's, uh, that's hard, even hard to measure.

Jayne: 15:03

Yes, I've been really fortunate and when you're thinking about the whole idea of the global impact, and we are an international society, so that's one area that we have addressed in, in our strategic planning, in the sense that we've gotta reach out and do a better job regarding the, uh, global outreach, if you will. And where are we going with this, and what can we do to ensure that our membership from the various communities of practice worldwide, how can we make sure that we're all working towards the common goal together, as you mentioned.

Deb: 15:35

Now, where do you see the future of simulation going?

Jayne: 15:38

You know, I mentioned this before and, oh gosh, it was an interview some time ago, but it was related to, and I truly believe it, we're in a time of just extraordinary change and rapid change. And it's a result of all the technologies and education and the explosion of vr, ar, ai, the mixed technologies, everything, including now they have the, uh, HU Medicine Association. And that is phenomenal because it's capturing what we need to do from the per perspective of the experts, the technology, the policymakers, all these kinds of elements are so important for the impact. So my analogy was then, and it still is in a sense, it's like the industrial evolution, but we're in a revolution now of change of what we're doing in our own simulation expansion, if you will. And the possibilities are just endless. So how we deal with it is going to be interesting to see in the future. And it's the tip of the iceberg as we know, innovations will continue to, to evolve. One of the things I'm looking forward to is, you know, and they've said this for years, but we will, we will see more realism, we will see more the hybrid models of incorporating different technologies to augment or enhance what we're doing in our roles and in, in various, whether it's the healthcare environments or the processes in simulation. So I think we have exciting times ahead and it's something that we're going to be making a difference through the society because we have some very incredible expertise to help that. And also the synergy not only of our academia and the experts in the area of simulation, but we're working together with the idea of our technology experts and the synergy of that will make a difference for our future.

Deb: 17:19

I think one of the things we need to be mindful of is as we continue to accredit programs, what kind of policies and procedures do we have set up in place around AR VR, fiscal intelligence, all of it. Because even if you think of a policy just as simple as how do you clean your headsets mm-hmm.<affirmative>, how do you provide psychological safety in the environment? How do you, you know, make sure physical safety, I mean, you could get in there and you could fall full down. So I think we need to consider that as we move forward with accreditation and put that on as a target is something that we need to consider.

Jayne: 17:56

Absolutely. And with all these changes that are happening in the evolution of our technologies, we have to address that. And that's something even during Covid that we had to take a look at it, our, uh, strategies for dealing with sanitization, with, uh, distancing, with anything to do with the screening of our faculty students that kind of, if we didn't come up with guidelines, we would never have been able to get back as quickly as we did. And fortunately in my institution, the leadership and the president, and he was making sure that we had the environment addressed through our engineers coming in and making sure that we had the, we had it safe for us in the areas that we were working in. So even though we were close for a while, we had enough guidelines and creativity to, to move forward with having us come in back to the experiential learning quicker than most because our, our rates were not too bad at the time when everything was shut down, we were not getting as much, although, you know, it's like everywhere. We were hitting some peaks at certain times, and we just had to be careful and just relate to what was happening globally and what was happening as far as the, the guidelines from the CDC, et cetera. But all of this is part of the process of growth and the process of making sure that we're addressing. And some of it, you know, it is evolving as we go along because of the situations and what we're being exposed to. So if we could use the core guidelines of what we have in some of the policies, as you mentioned, Deb, and utilize that for future policies with the ar I should say, vr ai that's important to, to be recognized.

Deb: 19:30

Yeah. Thank you. It, it's hard to believe yesterday cuz today is March 12th. So yesterday, March 11th, three years ago was declared the pandemic.

Jayne: 19:42

Mm-hmm.<affirmative>.

Deb: 19:43

It's just hard to believe

Jayne: 19:44

It is<laugh>. Unbelievable. And if we didn't have the adaptability and improvisation and, you know, resilience is one of the words that comes to mind, we would never have succeeded with our lessons moving forward in our challenges with Covid online education. Well, we all know that was just an evolving approach and the mode of utilizing that tech or that approach, if you will, was uh, very new to so many people. And we had to adjust using that and expanding the vision of what we do with video and online discussion and engagement. I mean, this was key. I remember having sessions before covid about activating passive learners, but<laugh> it became a, a paramount importance during and, and post covid with our, you know, our learners. So we really had to focus on engagement to keep their attention.

Deb: 20:35

Absolutely. Now is there any, anything during the pandemic that you learned, lessons learned, you know, from your place in the world? I, I think that's been one of my, been very interesting because if you talk to some people that were in New York during the height of the pandemic compared to, you know, different places where you were, you were impacted differently,

Jayne: 20:58

I think universally. I think we were all impacted in very similar ways. I just think that how we approached it in what we did to, um, to get back to whatever normality is, has been, uh, something that we all have to work on and we work on together. So I remember just researching all the things that we needed to do and find out how we're pivoting. So what exactly is the best way to approach this and working with faculty and getting some pilots happening, even for online engagement of real patients, if you will, if they were willing to do so. And that can still be such a, an important engagement with the students and a learning possibility, having the real time real assessment that you'd have to look at policies and procedures related to patients and the whole privacy issue thing too as well.

Deb: 21:50

Correct. Now I know that you are an accreditor for the society. Yeah. Um, and your program is accredited. So do you wanna talk to us a little bit about that, about both ends of it?

Jayne: 22:03

Well, I believe that accreditation provides the, um, essential foundation for our sim centers to, you know, to prepare and to practice the standards of practice of excellence. And we continue to aspire to become a full accredited center in the sense that even if centers are not yet accredited, it's critical that they follow the accreditation guidelines for quality and always towards the improvement of their teaching and learning in the environment. The standards are, you know, we know that they're critical and they really reveal being an accreditor with the quality and where the program is going and what can be improved. And even, I've had the privilege of evaluating so many programs over the years, and it's gratifying to see, you know, how worthwhile this the self-study accreditation processes and even these remarkable extraordinary sites. You know, you still, they're provided with recommendations and they certainly are considering areas that they can also improve on for their future accreditation aspirations.

Deb: 23:06

I would totally agree. There's so much fun to have the honor of being a reviewer and working with these programs that are so excited and then they, they realize and recognize that we are not there to, to be like the accreditation police. We are there to support them and help them cheer them on to the things that they're doing. And I think that that is one of the things that I've seen in the last five years is being a reviewer to be able to see that we jointly have that feeling essentially. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>

Jayne: 23:41

Truly. I

Deb: 23:43

Know. Yeah. Our shared mental model is that we wanna, is we have your back<laugh>.

Jayne: 23:49

Yes. Truly. Yeah,

Deb: 23:50

For Sure.

Jayne: 23:51

One of the questions that, uh, came to mind was, was the aha moment. I was gonna just, uh, mention something that really illuminated, um, the aha moment for me in relation to simulation. And it's, uh, something I recall when I was teaching with the med surge nurses and, and we were working with chest tube placement and management insertion, all this, but I was witnessing some puzzled expressions from my students describing some of the indications for chest tubes, for example, and things that happened like the pneumothorax, uh, hemothorax whatever, pleural effusion. But I realized I needed to draw a picture and I did for them to figure out what was happening and what was involved. And that moment I realized what we all know, you know, a picture says a thousand words. And so the visuals assisted me and enhanced my students' understanding. And the realization and the aha moment for me now, when I think about that, think about that time and now fast forward, all the advancements that are happening to enhance our simulation scenarios is building these into the scenarios that are now being fulfilled by enhancements like ar, vr, you know, those kinds of technologies that will definitely, um, improve our, our whole repertoire, if you will, of the simulation scenario and events that we're using for teaching our, our students and for faculty easing the preparation of faculty because it'll be built into the scenarios.

Deb: 25:25

Excellent.

Jayne: 25:26

I know it was a little off<laugh> an offshoot, but I just wanted to mention that cause it was, it meant something to me<laugh> and I thought it would be worthwhile for, for faculty and students and the future of simulation enhancement.

Deb: 25:41

Very worthwhile. Jared, do you have any questions?

Jerrod: 25:44

Yeah, I mean, you've had me going a lot of different ways and I haven't really wanted to interrupt, but it, it just goes to riff on that even more, Jayne is, healthcare simulation was coming out with high fidelity. There was all these manual scenarios and they wanted to have more standardized practice. You needed to have this automatic scenarios to be pushing so you don't have human bias or all this subjectivity around what's right or wrong and with the way the future, right. It's anybody's guess. But as it continues with this picture worth a thousand words, you're seeing more and more concrete, not only evidence, but also scenarios or simulations that are shown to have a large amount of efficacy. And I think there's just so much promise in how that goes forward. So I don't know, again, I don't try to keep going timetables, but when it comes to the aha moment, I don't know what year that was, but it's, it's cool to see how the future will kind of project that and, and move, move along as well to be mature more,

Jayne: 26:40

It just reinforces the fact that, you know, sim needs to to be a fabric of all our areas within the healthcare system. Yeah. And the power that can have and how does it become powerful if we include not only the actual scenarios where the pre-brief, the actual event and then the debrief, but all the elements that go into enhancing and making it very engaging for our learners. I think that's key.

Jerrod: 27:06

What do you think are the biggest challenges holding the industry back right now?

Jayne: 27:10

Wow. I think it's, uh, because it's the explosion of technologies, it's happening so quickly, we really need to take a look and step back and evaluate what's being effective and, and doing a lot more in regards to the work in publishing to inform our communities of practice and our people within the sim industry so that we are following in the right direction. We have to do this together because if we don't have the synergy of the, of the academics and the the reasons why we need this technology in addition to the building of the technology, it's, it's efforts lost or there's going to be issues where we have to have further development and cohesiveness of what we're doing for simulation.

Jerrod: 27:56

And so it's allowing the opportunity for everybody's voice to be heard and share that information.

Jayne: 28:00

Absolutely.

Deb: 28:01

Are there any final words that you'd like our listeners to remember this conversation by?

Jayne: 28:07

Well, one of the things I do wanna put in just a quick plug is there's the, for ASPI and INASCL and SSH, the Women in Leadership Symposium that's coming up in May, May 17th, I think it's wrote it down, it was, uh, May 17th, 10 to 3:30. And so just wanna mention that so that people are aware of that because I know that the registration's open. So, and I was thinking<laugh> about, you know, five words you'd like to let our listeners know. Something like Stephen Colbert, I don't know if you watch him the talk show host, but he has got that questionnaire. He always talks about, uh, the five words. And I was just saying in or thinking in general of what I'd like to leave this particular session with you and Jared for the simulationist out there. Be open to innovation and be inspired. Be open to thinking about things differently and be the best you can be. And in five words, like Stephen Colbert is asking about, make it happen via simulation.

Deb: 29:08

Love it.<laugh>, I just saw, Hey, thank you. I'm bit big. Stephen Colbert fan.<laugh>, thank you so much.

Jayne: 29:20

Thank you.

Deb: 29:21

Thank you Mahalo. Happy simulating

innovative Sim Solution Tag: 29:24

Thanks to Innovative Sim Solutions for sponsoring and supporting this podcast, Innovative Sim Solutions for all your simulation, tech, and innovative needs. Connect with them online today.

Outro: 29:43

Thanks for joining us here at The Sim Cafe. We hope you enjoyed, connect with us at www.innovativesimsolutions.com and be sure to hit that like and subscribe button so you never miss an episode ofThe Sim Cafe.