Simulation in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine Training and Education

About this Research Topic

Background

Approximately six thousand children require cardiopulmonary resuscitation each year worldwide. Between 2-6% of events occur in Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs), which require complex medical management and highly functioning teams to achieve optimal outcomes.

Healthcare professionals, particularly in-training providers, are expected to perform in high-pressure, high-risk, resource-limited environments; where they must learn and demonstrate effective team dynamics and Crisis Resource Management (CRM) skills.

Emerging literature suggests that quality and optimal teamwork behavior impacts safety culture, error rates, process efficiencies, and patient outcomes in high-stakes specialties such as Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (PCCM). Simulation-based training (SBT) provides the opportunity to train and assess learners’ critical knowledge and skills, improve their competency, and has the potential to improve patient outcomes, minimizing the chances for error.

Despite the importance of having coordinated teams to deliver safe care, most healthcare professionals never receive formal training in teamwork behaviors and communication skills. It is widely recognized that simulation-based CRM training is an essential component of healthcare education. There is abundant evidence from almost every high-acuity medical specialty and healthcare profession supporting the effectiveness of simulation-based CRM training programs in promoting the acquisition of crisis management skills. This will in turn improve patient outcomes such as morbidity and mortality, as PCCM teams are more prone to errors in complex critical care cases which require dynamic and complex interactions among multidisciplinary teams.

PCCM in low- and middle-income countries is a recently developed subspecialty. Simulation in these countries is in its infancy and there is a need for more research and development in this area.

The goals of this Research Topic are therefore to:

• Standardize the management of common scenarios in Pediatric Critical Care Medicine using high fidelity simulations

• Measure acquisition of optimal team performance during interdisciplinary simulation-based team training, and perform qualitative analysis of common trends in teamwork performance observed

• Use SBT to disseminate technical and procedural skills to make an impact at patient care level

• Identify tools and modalities utilized in SBT to make it more efficient and effective in terms of healthcare training and patient outcomes

• Measure effectiveness of coordinated team performance relating to predetermined goals and quality of care, in areas where healthcare professionals do not usually receive formal training e.g. teamwork behaviors and communication skills

• Measure the effectiveness of simulation-based Crisis Resource Management training programs in promoting the acquisition of CRM skills

• Determine measurable outcomes that can influence the downstream impact on patient care

• Assess various styles of debriefing for learner’s training in critical care settings.

The editors of this Research Topic welcome all types of manuscript including original research papers and reviews or mini-reviews.

We would like to acknowledge Dr. Rakshay Shetty, Dr. Ebor Jacob, and Dr. Naveed Ur Rehman Siddiqui who acted as coordinators and contributed to the preparation of the proposal for this Research Topic.

Keywords: Simulation, training, pediatric critical care, LMICs, PCCM

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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