A longitudinal interprofessional simulation curriculum for critical care teams: Exploring successes and challenges

ABSTRACT

Interprofessional care teams are the backbone of intensive care units (ICUs) where severity of illness is high and care requires varied skills and experience. Despite this care model, longitudinal educational programmes for such workplace teams rarely include all professions. In this article, we report findings on the initial assessment and evaluation of an ongoing, longitudinal simulation-based curriculum for interprofessional workplace critical care teams. The study had two independent components, quantitative learner assessment and qualitative curricular evaluation. To assess curriculum effectiveness at meeting learning objectives, participant-reported key learning points identified using a self-assessment tool administered immediately following curricular participation were mapped to session learning objectives. To evaluate the curriculum, we conducted a qualitative study using a phenomenology approach involving purposeful sampling of nine curricular participants undergoing recorded semi-structured interviews. Verbatim transcripts were reviewed by two independent readers to derive themes further subdivided into successes and barriers. Learner self-assessment demonstrated that the majority of learners, across all professions, achieved at least one intended learning objective with senior learners more likely to report team-based objectives and junior learners more likely to report knowledge/practice objectives. Successes identified by curricular evaluation included authentic critical care curricular content, safe learning environment, and team comradery from shared experience. Barriers included unfamiliarity with the simulation environment and clinical coverage for curricular participation. This study suggests that a sustainable interprofessional curriculum for workplace ICU critical care teams can achieve the desired educational impact and effectively deliver authentic simulated work experiences if barriers to educational engagement and participation can be overcome.

KEYWORDS:

• Communities of practice
• experiential learning
• intensive care unit teams
• interprofessional education
• reflective learning
• work-based learning

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the writing and content of this article.

Funding

The development of this curriculum was supported by a Frymoyer scholar’s award from the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at the University of Vermont.

Supplemental materials

Supplemental materials can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2017.1405920.

Additional information

Funding

The development of this curriculum was supported by a Frymoyer scholar’s award from the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at the University of Vermont.