Education & Training
Ontario Tech U and Lakeridge partner on simulation
July 31, 2024
OSHAWA, Ont. – Recognizing the gap in skill development opportunities for healthcare professionals, a community-based partnership between Ontario Tech University’s Faculty of Health Sciences (FHSc) and Lakeridge Health’s Critical Care Program is making significant progress to improve access to high-quality simulation resources for medical training, both locally and globally.
Ontario Tech’s healthcare simulation and research lab, maxSIMhealth, is at the forefront of innovation. This initiative is led by Dr. Adam Dubrowski (pictured), Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Health-Care Simulation, in partnership with Jann Weary, RN, from Lakeridge Health.
“Our work with Lakeridge Health enhances healthcare training by creating affordable, scalable simulation tools, ensuring high-quality skill development and improved patient care,” said Ontario Tech University’s Dr. Dubrowski.
The CRC-funded collaboration focuses on developing cost-effective and scalable simulation tools and platforms to standardize simulation curricula, ensuring uniform training opportunities.
Over the last two years, Lakeridge Health noted an increase in the need for rapid intraosseous (IO) infusions, a medical procedure used to deliver fluids and medications directly into bone marrow. IOs are crucial for emergency situations where intravenous access is difficult. Due to a post-COVID nursing shortage and an influx of new hires, the skill of IO insertion has become rare among staff. Existing educational materials, such as expensive and commercially available simulators, were more than five years out of date and no longer provided realistic simulations for IO insertion.
Lakeridge Health reached out to maxSIMhealth and accessed the expertise of Ontario Tech FHSc graduate students, notably Julia Micallef, one of Dr. Dubrowski’s doctoral students, to develop new, up-to-date, and cost-effective simulators. These simulators, previously designed and rigorously tested with the help of Dale Button, a paramedic and educator at Durham College’s Paramedic training program and Lakeridge Health’s Central East Prehospital Care Program, were redesigned to better serve the new purpose.
The new simulators were employed to teach IO insertion to RNs in Critical Care. The success of this initiative led to its expansion to the Lakeridge Health Emergency and Respiratory Therapy departments. Today, every new hire in the hospital’s Critical Care Unit undergoes this training during onboarding. It has also recently been extended to Queen’s University medical student residents working in Lakeridge Health Critical Care in Oshawa.
In addition to redeveloping the IO simulators, maxSIMhealth provided Lakeridge Health with innovative solutions related to simulation training drills that historically cost about $1,000 per unit and have a limited lifespan because they are not rechargeable. maxSIMhealth’s solution involved using commercially available small handheld drills (costing $15 each) and equipping them with a custom-made 3D-printed drill adaptor to transform them from household items into simulated life-saving equipment.
These devices were recently adopted by Swedish physician Dr. Patrik Hallmén, who requested the designs be shared to develop a cost-effective training program for military medics on the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine war.
Building on the success of the IO insertion training project, the hospital’s Emergency Department and maxSIMhealth are partnering to create similar simulators tailored for pediatric care. Additionally, the multi-institutional team has undertaken smaller projects, such as developing an intravenous (IV) cannulation (transfer of liquid between vessels) practice kit that allows frontline staff to practice IV insertions with blood flashback (first indication of blood entering a syringe), a feature previously unavailable at Lakeridge Health.
“These simulation tools are more realistic and user-friendly than historical tools, ensuring staff are better prepared and confident when they need to use this skill on a patient. This absence of delays in obtaining IV access has improved patient care during emergency events,” said Jann Weary, clinical practice leader, Lakeridge Health Critical Care Program.