Simulation

AHRQ has funded simulation research as part of its patient safety mission for more than 2 decades. AHRQ is the lead federal agency investing in research to identify the best ways to use simulation in healthcare. AHRQ-funded research using simulation has expanded knowledge about how to use simulation to make care safer in a variety of clinical settings. Simulation has been proven to help clinicians practice and improve knowledge, skills, and behaviors before treating patients. Simulation helps healthcare delivery teams improve their knowledge and their interactions with each other and with patients and families. Simulation also helps organizations improve resources and processes to optimize healthcare delivery.

Simulation can be used to create a learning environment which provides safety for both patients and participants while allowing researchers and practitioners to test and improve clinical processes. Examples of AHRQ-funded simulation-based learning include using simulation to educate, train or assess clinicians inserting central venous catheters with ultrasound guidance, diagnosing skin cancer, identifying sepsis or performing laparoscopic surgical procedures. Simulation can also be used to evaluate capabilities. Research about simulation helps inform ways to educate clinicians and healthcare delivery teams.

Simulation can also be valuable as a tool used to conduct research. AHRQ has funded research that uses simulation as a methodology to re-engineer aspects of healthcare delivery systems which impact patient and healthcare worker safety, including applications as diverse as modifying the built environment, redesigning equipment arrangements and access, optimizing clinical care processes and developing diagnostic performance feedback loops. 

Simulations are developed from many types of simulators, with varying amounts of technologic enhancement, realism, and cost. Simulators include physical mannequins representing entire humans, built task trainers representing various portions of humans, robots, biologic specimens, standardized patients (actors), virtual/ augmented/ mixed reality representations and modeling processes.