The Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment (CELA)

Mission Statement

The mission of the Center for Experiential Learning and Assessment (CELA) will provide an educationally rich environment for training healthcare professionals to practice safe, effective and compassion clinical care. CELA is dedicated to the use of simulations to fulfill its mission. It is informed by the best practices of teaching and clinical practice and grounded in theory-based research. Integral to this mission, CELA will conduct rigorous research that extends our knowledge and practice of experiential learning and assessment by simulations.

CELA EVENT GALA CELEBRATION

Anne Rayner - Medical Photography

Background

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine is committed to developing and disseminating processes and tools that will facilitate the appropriate generation, learning, and application of medical knowledge, skills and attitudes to improve clinical competence.

Effective clinical education will increasingly require innovative approaches and greater collaboration with the wider community. Patient safety, the reduction of medical error, and enhance healthcare quality have become major pubic policy issues. Simulation is a proven and effective tool for training, performance evaluation and research.

Vanderbilt has made a major commitment to simulation training.

Limitations of Real Patient Care as a Teaching Tool

The application of clinical knowledge and the development of skills to diagnose successfully and treat patients effectively require deliberate and meaningful practice. Opportunities to practice clinical management may be limited because many specific clinical problems occur infrequently and are usually complicated by confounding factors.

Traditionally, complex communication skills (e.g., doctor-patient interactions) are learned “on the fly” with little time for practice and feedback. Actual clinical crises are suboptimal learning opportunities because they are relatively rare, each event is unique, and improper treatment can have tragic consequences.

Societal pressures, including cost-containment and patient safety issues, will increasingly preclude the use of real patients, especially ill ones, in hands-on medical education and training.

Thus, the “see one, do one, teach one” model is no longer tenable. In its stead, simulation provides a unique opportunity to train clinical excellence more efficiently and effectively.

Why is Simulation so Valuable for Medical Education?

Simulation curricula can be specified and scheduled in advance when it makes the most sense in the continuum of training, rather leaving it to the chance occurrence of learning during everyday patient care. Current simulation technology is sufficiently realistic to be a surrogate for actual patient care.

Patient simulation provides the ability to repeatedly practice a wide range of clinical scenarios. Because simulated clinical scenarios are completely replicable and highly standardized, it is much easier to review and evaluate performance. Simulation experiences can be videotaped and reviewed by trainees to further facilitate learning and permit assessment of process and style as well as outcome.

The convenience of scheduled practice on specific clinical events permits effective and efficient team training. Lessons taught in a realistic simulation are retained better, due to the required active learning and focused concentration, the experience’s emotional investment, and the direct association with the real world.

Goals of CELA

• Make critical educational contributions in the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine at all levels from pre-medical through undergraduate, graduate and continuing medical education.
• Facilitate quality clinical care via on-going training and quality assurance programs for all types of clinicians and at multiple levels with Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
• Be a major educational resource throughout Vanderbilt University, in the Nashville community, and across the Tennessee Valley.
• Provide critical resources to support clinical research and for extramurally funded projects.
• Be recognized as a community educational resource.
• Generate significant positive public relations for Vanderbilt.

Anticipated Program Elements

• Sophisticated standardized patient (SP) program that supports basic and advanced clinical skills training for all types of clinicians from novices to community practitioners.
• High fidelity patient simulations (simulators, educational technology, and facilities capable of supporting the full range of clinical domains and activities).
• Virtual and mixed reality simulators (e.g., partial task trainers for arthroscopy, endoscopy, laparoscopy, bronchoscopy, central vascular interventions, etc.)
• Computer-based educational software (e.g., for learning cardiovascular physiology).
• Close integration of technically based simulation and the SP program in a mutually supportive center.
• Interdisciplinary collaboration of faculty and staff to foster CELA’s mission and goals.
• Close collaboration with VUMC (e.g., Learning Center, Informatics Center, School of Nursing) and the general campus (e.g., College of Education).
• Research component that advances faculty career development and VUMC strategic plan.

Benefits of Technical Simulations

• Enhanced progressive longitudinal training of all types of clinical personnel.
• Enhanced ability to evaluate the progress of training.
• Enhanced evaluation, training, and recertification of experienced physicians.
• Opportunity for community outreach to students (elementary through higher ed), community physicians and other health care workers, media, politicians, etc.
• Unique research tool providing the opportunity to pursue new extramural funding in evidenced-based medicine, clinical education research, and the pre-clinical testing of medical devices and drugs.
• Increasingly important to recruitment of medical students, residents, staff physicians, nurses, and other clinical personnel.

Benefits of Standardized Patient Simulations

• Learn and practice important clinical and communication skills with individuals who are trained to respond to the wide variety of approaches to patient care, emotional challenges, and in settings that offer challenges to trainees.
• Provide accurate and reproducible record of trainee actions, providing a fair and reliable method of evaluating performance.
• Trainees receive direct feedback regarding their interaction with the standardized patient from their unique perspective as a patient.
• Used in a wide variety of health care communications training settings (e.g., standardized parents, students, doctors, nurses, etc. as part of multidisciplinary teams, etc.)
• Unique training or outcomes measure in instructional intervention research.