ASPE’s 18th conference was recently held in Orlando from June 8-11, 2019, bringing together a record number of SP educators from around the world to learn from and with each other about with the intention of advancing our practices.
Three plenary speakers covered diverse topics that engaged participants. Dr. Juan Cendan’s reflected on how happenstance, or unplanned events, affect career trajectories resonated with many in the audience. Dr Amitai Ziv, the Howard S Barrows invited plenary speaker, outlined the positive cultural change, related to healthcare quality and patient safety education, that has happened in his Israeli context by working with SPs in simulation training. Finally, Dr, Christine Park, past president of SSH, explored the Healthcare Simulationist Code of Ethics which she was instrumental in developing. She reminded us all about the importance of integrating the key aspiration values contained in this document – Integrity, transparency, mutual respect, professionalism, accountability and results orientation – into our work.
Sessions were organized around 5 themes – administration, advancing your SPs, curricular programming/care development, GTA/MUTA and SP educator development – and presented in numerous formats including: workshops, presentation/discussions, and posters. A highlight was Dr. Karen Sauter’s annual literature review of SP research, which you currently can access here: https://www.utmb.edu/meded/bibliography/spsortbyPI.asp.
In addition, in many sessions, the ASPE Standards of Best Practice (SOBP) for human role players in simulation, took a prominent position, ranging from being the focus of sessions to promoting reflection of how variables, such as culture, affect the application of the standards. The ASPE SOBP can be accessed though the open source journal Advances in Simulation: https://advancesinsimulation.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41077-017-0043-4. Next year’s conference is in Portland, Oregon from June 7-10, 2020.
Reported by Cathy Smith