Ever wondered what makes simulation education so impactful in the healthcare sector? Pull up a chair and join our enlightening conversation with two outstanding guests, Colette Laws Chapman and Kevin Stirling, from the United Kingdom who are making significant strides in this field. Hear first-hand from Colette, a registered nurse with a rich background in theatre and intensive care nursing, and Kevin, who transitioned from critical care nursing to simulation education. They share their inspiring journey into the field, along with their work and experiences with simulation teams across Europe and the UK. At the heart of their chat, is the power of simulation to improve practices and ultimately save lives.
There's more to this captivating chat as Colette and Kevin take us through the exciting details of the upcoming Sustainable Simulation Conference and Exhibition. Colette offers a glimpse into her role on the Executive Committee of ASPiE with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in simulation. Kevin, on the other hand, reveals the three core activities that will be showcased at the Sustainability Forum. They also share their vision for the future and discuss their collaborations with industry, commercial, and academic partners to deliver high-quality, simulation-based care. Tune in for an episode loaded with insights on the impact and potential of simulation education.
Innovative SimSolutions.
Your turnkey solution provider for medical simulation programs, sim centers & faculty design.
Ever wondered what makes simulation education so impactful in the healthcare sector? Pull up a chair and join our enlightening conversation with two outstanding guests, Colette Laws Chapman and Kevin Stirling, from the United Kingdom who are making significant strides in this field. Hear first-hand from Colette, a registered nurse with a rich background in theatre and intensive care nursing, and Kevin, who transitioned from critical care nursing to simulation education. They share their inspiring journey into the field, along with their work and experiences with simulation teams across Europe and the UK. At the heart of their chat, is the power of simulation to improve practices and ultimately save lives.
There's more to this captivating chat as Colette and Kevin take us through the exciting details of the upcoming Sustainable Simulation Conference and Exhibition. Colette offers a glimpse into her role on the Executive Committee of ASPiE with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in simulation. Kevin, on the other hand, reveals the three core activities that will be showcased at the Sustainability Forum. They also share their vision for the future and discuss their collaborations with industry, commercial, and academic partners to deliver high-quality, simulation-based care. Tune in for an episode loaded with insights on the impact and potential of simulation education.
Innovative SimSolutions.
Your turnkey solution provider for medical simulation programs, sim centers & faculty design.
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.
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Disclaimer / Show Intro: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 Tauber:Welcome to another episode of the Sim Cafe. Today I'm here with co-host Jerrod Jeffries. We are here with our wonderful guests Collette Laws Chapman and Kevin Sterling, so thank you so much for being guests on the podcast today.
Jerrod Jeffries:Thank you. Where are you two calling in from?
Collette Laws Chapman:Hi, I'm Collette. I live in South London and that's where I'm calling from today.
Jerrod Jeffries:How nice Kevin.
Kevin Sterling:I'm Kevin. I'm calling from just outside Dundee in Scotland. Okay, Scotland.
Jerrod Jeffries:So we're not too thick of an accent, so that's okay for us. Right now, Kevin, we don't want our listeners to be like, okay, what did that guy say? Do you have subtitles?
Kevin Sterling:I sometimes come with subtitles.
Jerrod Jeffries:yes, Well, thank you both so much for being here and I'm really excited to dig a little into the United Kingdom side of simulation education and what ASPiH is doing. But before we get into ASPiH, of course, I want to hear a little bit about both of you. So, Collette, would you maybe tell us a little bit about your personal story and what your position is with ASPiH and what's going on in your role?
Collette Laws Chapman:Certainly so. I'm a nurse, a registered nurse for adult nursing, since, oh, quite a long while I'm coming up to about 34 years and my background was theatre and intensive care nursing. I went into teaching in intensive care and focused a lot on obviously very interactive learning at bedside, and I moved into quality improvement and practice development roles to develop the evidence base for critical care. And then over time, I was an operational what we call in the UK head of nursing, so managed a large surgical unit with a high dependency unit and 10 wards and three out of patient areas. And there I was in really enjoying teaching, still doing some leadership, and I thought, hey, I want to do something different.
Collette Laws Chapman:And I discovered simulation and I was very lucky I had the educational budget for some newly qualified nurses and I bumped into a colleague who said, hey, we've got this new simulation suite and can you get involved? And I said, oh, I probably could. And he said, well, you've got money, you definitely can. So there, that's how it happened in 2009. And I was part-time doing some faculty development and learning the art of SIM and then I was really interested in it becoming something more interprofessional for my organisation some hospital-based simulation, mostly for post-qualifying interprofessional colleagues, and I've been doing a full-time job as the deputy director of our simulation service and the lead nurse for patient safety simulation and anything non-medical curriculum, so kind of a long journey through.
Jerrod Jeffries:Certainly. But I mean, you've touched on so many different roles and I'm sure also the theatrical background also has benefited a little bit as well, in probably some of the most different ways than any could imagine. But of course the simulation anything's possible.
Deb Tauber:Yeah so.
Jerrod Jeffries:Kevin, I would love to hear the same question, your personal story and what you're doing with ASPiH as well.
Kevin Sterling:Well, I kind of followed a similar but shorter journey to collect my clinical life. As a nurse was very much in critical care and there came an opportunity to join clinical skills team in Dundee and I took the plunge because I'd done a lot of ward-based education and I thought, why not, we'll see what it looks like for a few years. And on my second day in this role, based in mind that I'd worked in an operating theater for eight years before this, somebody put me in a simulated ward to act as a nurse. And I hadn't been a nurse in a ward for at least eight years and I had this hugely immersive, stressful experience of relearning what a nurse was while trying to act out this role in a simulated environment. And from that afternoon onwards I was hooked on simulation. I learned the power firsthand of a simulated environment because I was becoming stressed when I was relearning skills I hadn't used in over eight years. I was working with monikens and actors in this near clinical environments and I could see the way that it was able to determine which students were performing adequately, which were performing to an excellent standard and those students that required a bit of additional support. So I had that sort of enlightenment moment that afternoon. And that was 15 years ago and I still find myself being involved with simulation and loving simulation to this date.
Kevin Sterling:I've been privileged to work with simulation teams across Europe and the UK on a number of occasions and I think that's what still excites me is the power of simulation to make an impact, to change practice and to help save lives. That's the real driver for me doing what I do on a day-to-day basis and also why I got involved with ASPiH. So, yeah, I came back to ASPiH in March this year. I was interviewed by the Executive Committee and invited to join. I had been part of the original Executive Committee that set up ASPiH almost 15 years ago and I rejoined this year with the support and direction of Collette. She encouraged me to take on a commercial partnerships and projects lead role, and that's really exciting role. It's allowing us as an organisation to explore some of the collaborations that we can enter into with commercial partners, with healthcare regulators and with other educational bodies to really advance the utilisation of simulation across the UK and Ireland. So, yeah, it's been an exciting year so far for myself rejoining at ASPiH .
Deb Tauber:Thank you both for your commitment. Can you help me understand a little bit more about not to be confused with , and how long it's been around and specifically how it got started? I'm very familiar with SSH, with the INASCL, with SimGhost s, but not as familiar with some of the You're based in the US Deb. Yeah, Chicago.
Jerrod Jeffries:We gotta give some love to our friends across the pond Great.
Collette Laws Chapman:Very much and we at , with an IH, are really proud to have close relationships with SSH colleagues actually who've helped us over the years. Yeah, so I suppose the itself as an organisation Kevin was one of the founding members of that it had a couple of iterations, I believe before that I wasn't involved and I wasn't around then, but it formed in 2009 to be an interprofessional executive committee to create a membership opportunity for interprofessional colleagues working within simulation, and although our website address as a UK ending to it and at the time it very much was UK membership because, you know, 14 years ago we didn't have such great opportunities like Zoom and advances with other products that help us communicate and liaise more but it's always been designed to be representative and supportive, to guide members in terms of standards of best practice within simulation and to help create communications across different groups. So's always supported our technical colleagues. There were a variety of job titles, but people that help behind the scenes, usually within simulation. They were either technical engineers, sound engineers, technicians or clinical skills technicians.
Collette Laws Chapman:So we have a special interest group purely for technicians and then over the years, there's been other special interest groups as and when we've needed them. Some of them have become dormant, but we're currently renewing special interest groups in areas such as primary healthcare or health and care and meta debriefing. Debriefing and special interest groups just to create communities of practice. So I think that was the origins of and back in 2016, they were able to launch their first set of standards. That were as a result of, you know, researching the evidence, talking to other societies and having focus groups across the UK to have standards of practice, and we are just currently about to launch our new, revised standards, so we're really pleased it's second edition coming out, so I think I hope that answers your question briefly. I'm sure Kevin can fill in some of the gaps around that and then I can tell you about my role a little bit later too.
Jerrod Jeffries:Yeah, thank you and I want to hear more from him. But one question is so you're focused on the United Kingdom or it's more global, or has it was it started within that and it's kind of transitioned into a more hybrid, or can you just touch upon that briefly?
Collette Laws Chapman:Yeah, thanks, Jerrod, for getting me to clarify. So we have always been open to membership from anywhere, so, and we'd love a broad membership. But I think because we were a smaller place back then, we did focus and members coming and travelling from overseas didn't always necessarily want to come to our conference. But it is open and we welcome, as I said, colleagues from around the world. We do have organizational membership from a couple of countries and we do have many people come and present at conference, either as an invited keynote or someone that submitted our papers, and those people could come from any part of the interprofessional faculty. I don't think we are wanting to take over the world, but we have an opportunity and we absolutely love so our journal clubs. If we're presenting or we have a paper that we picked that happens to have an author from Australia or happens to have someone from America or Denmark, or then they're invited and they tend to invite their colleagues to join in. We've really enjoyed, as I said, this whole online opportunity. For us has been really opening up our networks.
Jerrod Jeffries:Yeah, thank you.
Kevin Sterling:Kevin, yeah, I think, like Collette described, the overarching ethos about has always been about inclusion and it's always been collegiate and it's always been very organic in the manner that it's developed.
Kevin Sterling:And I think there has been this sort of natural growth and refocusing on the mission of , especially after the pandemic, because those few years where we couldn't meet really allowed people to see the value of organizations, of networks and of having increasingly sort of diverse communities, international communities that you could reach out and contact.
Kevin Sterling:So I think last year's conference was very successful, our first main face-to-face conference. Again this year is looking to be a really good conference as well. But the aspiration of the organization is to be with people where they're delivering skills, delivering simulation within their area or the local area. So it's now us taking that next step of how we can support people within the areas that they practice, through the standards, like Collette has described, but also through regional activity across the UK and, as Collette described as well, the Journal Club allows us to take that richness of literature and experience from international colleagues to then be able to try that out, to test it and actually to then develop those further research collaborations. It's that multifaceted organization, much like most other simulation groups. But we've always been very interprofessional, very collegiate, very driven to make a change and I think the new standards will really sort of exemplify future trajectory of where is going as an organization.
Deb Tauber:Thank you, Kevin, and specifically, what is your role there?
Kevin Sterling:With the NASPE. Yeah, I am commercial partnerships and projects lead. I work with the folks that will be joining us in the exhibition hall for the conference just to look at their mission and vision and how that's aligned and how we might be able to undertake collaborations beyond the annual conference that might, as I've described, deliver some of that regional activity or online activity that achieves our mutual goals as an organization. So this role really only came about in May this year but it was a real aspiration of Collette to bring that closer working and collaboration between our colleagues who we value in the exhibition hall, be they commercial partners, healthcare regulators or other educational bodies, to really advance simulation. It is that impact conversation about how we can evidence what we are doing at a national and local level and those partnerships are central to that.
Jerrod Jeffries:Kevin, I love your eye for data. It's so good because you just want to back up everything with numbers, and that really resonates with myself specifically. But of course, some of our previous guests we've had on as well. And Collette, would you share as well?
Collette Laws Chapman:Yes, certainly so. When I first joined I was headhunted, I think, if I'm allowed to say, but mostly because they were very keen to make sure there was always nursing representation on the committee. But also my critical care nurse background role, I was conference director for that organisation for 15 or years. So I came to be our conference director and it was during the pandemic for me that all our colleagues who were anaesthetists because I was in education, I didn't need to go on the front lines straight away I was able to, and I had to step up and support ASPiH to keep us going through the pandemic, because I think we were talking just offline to say we're volunteers, so we're. You know, would have folded really if we hadn't have kept doing something. And it was there that I saw the opportunity for us to really strengthen. As you know, we met so many simulation colleagues during the pandemic who were all trying to help and I thought well, you know, I really like trying to bring us together, bring us closer to sharing more. And because I had to step up, I was then asked would I be interested in the president elect and then becoming the president? So it wasn't really my choice to come president. I hadn't consciously thought of it, but I am the president of ASPiH and I'm very proud to say I'm the first nurse to have done that predominantly had anaesthetic colleagues in that leadership role.
Collette Laws Chapman:So it's exciting for all of us because we do have representation from Alline Health and our technical colleagues and nurses and doctors, primary care and acute hospital care, as well as the academic world on our exec and I think that's what we're trying to do. So I'm trying to show leadership for that into professional, into collegiate and, as Kevin said, for me the vision is we're partners. We're partners with colleagues who are from industry and commercial, be that small startup companies or be that those you know, long term invested companies like CAE and all the others I mustn't name Laurdal, I mustn't say them all or whatever. I'll get that wrong. You might want to edit that.
Collette Laws Chapman:But also it's about thinking for the future. You know having patient experts on our executive committees we have a patient voice, the authentic patient voice, whilst we simulate and use standardized patients and follow the guidelines of our colleagues from . With an E, we're working towards partnership and working towards being strategic, but also at a local level, helping and enabling people to really deliver high quality simulation based care both in the universities for undergraduate provision, postgraduate provision, but also within hospitals and healthcare sector areas across our local primary care GP practice, that kind of thing. It's so great to be working with all these amazing people on the executive. I'm very lucky.
Jerrod Jeffries:Yeah, and I'm poking around your website here too, because you first mentioned the diversity piece, which I see from 2022, your big push was diversity, equity, inclusion, you know, in simulation, and then now I also see you guys have a conference coming up it just actually is that next month as well which is also focused on succession planning. So I think that what you've formed on the executive committee and what you're able to bring to you know within your leadership role, I think is touching upon that very well and you're well suited for it. So I appreciate you being with us.
Collette Laws Chapman:Thank you, it's so great. I'm very lucky to be doing it as a privilege.
Deb Tauber:Thank you, Collette, and congratulations as a first nurse. As being a nurse, I can recognize that's fantastic.
Jerrod Jeffries:I'm even more interested now. Now you guys give me all the details here on the conference here. I don't know who wants to go, Kevin, it seems like it's your role, maybe more so, but I would love to hear, maybe first from you, Collette, and then I will go to Kevin.
Collette Laws Chapman:Yeah, I'll touch on some of it. The conference thing this year is around sustainable simulation. We are looking at, as you say, sustainable workforce, sustaining quality, making sure there's an evidence base for best practice and dissemination. But also, very importantly, starting and one of our new special interest groups that's going to be launched at conference is around sustainability for simulated practice and that's about thinking about our carbon footprint, thinking about how we use and practice and run simulation safely, so we're not cutting corners but also thinking about our workforce.
Collette Laws Chapman:So conferences over three days. We have a pre-conference half day I suppose where we've got expert workshop sessions on human factors, sustainability and technical workshop, plus a debriefing, advanced debriefing workshop and then so some delegates will come to that and then stay on for the rest of the conference. But the rest is over two days in lovely place called Brighton. If you ever come to the UK, guys, it's lovely.
Collette Laws Chapman:Maybe not so lovely in November because it's right by the sea, it's going to be very cold we're on the seaside edge there, but it'll be great and we have a number of keynote speakers, including Professor Paul Bowie talking about human factors and for the first time, and because I know it's a pre-conference director, we used to have seven or eight strands, we're up to 12 strands. We were overwhelmed with paper submissions this year, so we have a number of workshops. All our special interest groups are running workshops and we have well, a sheer plethora of them, ranging from anything to do with sustainability and workforce, but also people's projects on best practice utilizing 360-degree cameras and other things like that Typical multi-professional conference. Kevin knows all about exhibition and a fabulous thing called the Sustainability Forum, so we're going to let Kevin come in.
Kevin Sterling:Thanks Collette.
Collette Laws Chapman:So yeah.
Kevin Sterling:Collette will be delivering her pre-conference workshop on the 6th of November and she'll be enjoying meeting some of our delegates and I'll be in the exhibition hall working with all our colleagues who are coming to exhibit. So when she's doing the really cool stuff I'll be working shifting crates and moving stuff. But it's a real privilege to run these pre-conference days on the 6th before the main conference on the 7th and the 8th, and it's also a privilege to welcome those folks that are going to be in the exhibition hall because they're the ones that make the conference possible. And, like I'm describing in my role, we wanted to make the exhibition hall a very vibrant place, a very engaging place, a place where people wanted to go and talk to commercial partners or just meet and talk with other colleagues from across the UK or more widely afield. So to really sort of bring the conference theme together, this year we've created a sustainability forum and there's going to be three core activities happening in that forum and they're under the conference sub-themes of Enhance, share and Improve and the Enhance theme that will run on the 7th, on the first formal day of conference, and that's where we'll get all our SIMTech community showing us how to maximise how we use our cameras, how we use our mannequins, and also to really invite some of our commercial partners to come up and get on the stage and say this is what we're doing or this is some of the innovations we're taking out. So that forum is going to be located in the exhibition hall and it's really designed to create that networking space.
Kevin Sterling:The share theme and this might be challenging for yourself, it's where you've only got three minutes to talk about something and you'd probably struggle with that time limit, gerald, but really we want people to talk about something succinctly. This is something I'm really proud of, this is something I'm working on, this is something we hope to bring to market. So, three minutes to present, two minutes for questions and then, like Colette has described, the new standards are going to get launched at conference on the second day, on the eighth, on the Wednesday, and then we're going to hold an improved meeting in the exhibition hall at the sustainability forum where we'll talk about the standards. We'll talk about this new sustainability sig and we'll talk about how we as a simulation community both commercial partners, regulators could take some of those standards and actually change the dialogue, move away from simulations expensive to. This is the value that simulation brings to your organization. So it is that dialogue change of I'm really sorry it costs a lot of money to actually do. You know how much time simulation saves your organization by shortening the curve to competency.
Kevin Sterling:So that's the flavor of what's happening in the exhibition hall. I recall with our exhibitors today and, oh my goodness, there's some amazing stuff coming to Brighton lots of VR stuff, AI, there's those immersive simulation boosters at least two of those coming. There was something called a juice bar gonna be there as well, but that seems far too healthy for somebody from Scotland. But there's gonna be a very inclusive vibe this year in the hall. We're also gonna be doing a daily broadcast from the exhibition hall as well. So today for to showcase to our virtual attendees and also to those that maybe can't make it this year, that they can still get some of the feeling and some of the key messages from presidents, from our keynote speakers and from some of our exhibitors, just to give them a flavor of what's happening in Brighton.
Deb Tauber:Thank, you, Kevin. Can you share how many vendors will you have there?
Kevin Sterling:So we were really, really fortunate in that we managed to sell out our exhibition space about four weeks ago and we have got almost 40 different exhibitors coming to the conference. Some are just taking one space or others are coming with multiple different sort of flavors off their company that they're going to showcase over the different days. So it's been a real privilege to work with so many different people and really to see those in the exhibition hall. Getting behind the theme of sustainability, there's a lot of strong sustainability coming ideas coming from our commercial partners this year, so it's going to be really exciting.
Collette Laws Chapman:I just wanted to go back to you with, after the formal launch, we're holding a symposium for delegates to attend, but also, more importantly, we've invited very important UK-based stakeholders from our commissioning bodies for our professional bodies. So Health and Education, NHS England sorry NHS Scotland our nursing with Wifery Council, the Royal College of Nursing, and we've invited the Allied Health and Medical Equivalents to come and help talk and discuss with us how we implement and bed in those standards across the diverse areas that simulation is being implemented, because we want to make this the journey to really try and help produce high quality sims so that it's safe for our learners, that it's safe for our faculty and, of course, helps improve patient safety. So it's a pretty big conference. We're very excited about it.
Jerrod Jeffries:So where can our listeners learn more about the conference?
Collette Laws Chapman:Well, we have our own dedicated website conference. So just type in on any of your search engines for www , that's ASP-IH, conferencecouk, and we have several tabs all about the conference and also a tab that will take you back to our main website.
Jerrod Jeffries:Thank you. I'm going to be checking the weather and Brighten, though Excited, but we'll see. I think it's a. I think it sounds like a great conference and a lot of vendors. I think a lot of good stuff's happening in the United Kingdom and it's with conferences and being back in full force. It's always been exciting to attend the different ones this year, so I think that also lays true with the , with an H conference this year too. So thank you.
Deb Tauber:Thank you very much. Is there anything that you want to leave our listeners with or any questions that you have for Jerrod and I?
Collette Laws Chapman:I mean, the first thing would be to say thank you for inviting us, thank you for listening that our online door is always open. We would love for anyone to visit our website and find out how they can get information for the Journal Club. It's open to anyone. We're trying to do it in the morning and afternoons so that we can meet different time zones, because we do have the Executive Committee members in Australia and in based in Europe. And, yeah, I think we hope to continue to forge strong links with all our colleagues. We're all in this together, as we have been from the pandemic, but we are in this. I think we've all got the same vision we all want to do a great job. So I think all our organisations can help people who aren't necessarily well connected become better connected to the evidence or to people that can help them. That's it from me. I'm just really excited to have had this chance to speak to you.
Deb Tauber:Thank you, Kevin. Any closing thoughts?
Kevin Sterling:I think it shows the energy and the power that simulation has in the folks that are involved in this community. You know, there's just been the photo of us in this virtual room having this conversation and we're excited about what we might be able to do. We're excited about what we can realise and I think very much from AspiH's perspective. We're heading towards our 15th birthday and we really want to showcase that over the coming years as we head into that sort of celebratory event. And just having this opportunity to talk, to share, to link in with the global SIM community is just a fantastic way to signpost towards Brighton and then onwards to the bigger celebration next year. So, yeah, thank you for bringing this podcast together because it just allows people to catch up, share and be sort of re-energised as they go about their daily process of delivering some. We all sometimes need to have that opportunity to pause and to re-energise. So, yeah, thank you for inviting us on. Thank you.
Deb Tauber:Thank you very much, an. with that, hopefully you'll see some of our listeners in just a month from now. And thank you and happy simulating.
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