Teaching Innovation: Implementation Of Simulated Patients To Enhance Realism In Interprofessional Team Simulations For Nursing, Paramedic And Emergency Telecommunications Students. A Pilot Project With Intention To Scale.

Interprofessional Collaborative Practice (IPCP) has long been identified as an important strategy for improved patient safety. Over the last decade, healthcare and social services professionals have been called upon to increase their IPCP to provide improved and more efficient care to clients (Canadian Interprofessional Health Collaborative, 2010; WHO (World Health Organization), 2010).

This proposal is an innovative pedagogical approach that involves an experiential interprofessional simulation using standardized patients for students in the Faculty of Health Sciences & Wellness. The innovative approach supports the development of essential skills of teamwork, collaboration, and patient safety using actors as Simulated Patients (SPs) in simulation delivery within an interprofessional learning experience.

This proposal will lead to transformative change across learning environments by enhancing students’ opportunity to develop essential skills such as systems thinking, and many meta-skills such as collaboration, communication, innovation, leadership, professionalism, and problem-solving. This work also leads to a transformative change in delivery of simulation by laying the foundation of a collaboration with the Creative Talent Booking Centre, within the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts, working with students and alumni from the Acting for Film & Television program to participate as 'Simulated Patients'.