Mid-Continent Regional Center for Health Care Simulation, Wichita, KS

CAMA, INC.

EBD Goal

To create highly realistic participatory learning experiences in an environment that does not involve an actual patient. This method of teaching is rapidly becoming a new standard in both primary and continuing education for health professionals. The intent is to improve learning experiences through improved personal and technical skills and interdisciplinary team communications in an environment designed and built around current evidence-based medicine, evidence-based practice and evidence-based design knowledge. The design team plans to launch innovation in the design of the physical environment by using baseline knowledge in all three of these methodologies to simulate best clinical practice in the field for students and advancing professionals.

Challenge

Healthcare simulation improves clinical and technical skills, teamwork, patient safety, and communications. It is however, uncharted in the evidence-based design (EBD) literature. Much would be gained if the field offered more about improved communications, team learning or workplace efficiency for interdisciplinary medical teams in highly technical settings. Using knowledge about EBD clinical environments, these settings will be developed and designed as best practice environments with next practice technologies. How interdisciplinary teams learn and communicate will determine the success of these settings and contribute to the field as a whole.

Solution

The project is in the gathering intelligence phase with concepts being rendered for ongoing fund development. The design solutions call upon EBD baseline data available for the design of progressive highly technical clinical practice environments and up-to-date on site and remote learning experiences. The opportunity exists to allow participants in these learning experiences to experience state of the art evidence-based design informed environments that help to improve outcomes and reduce risks of error while learning hands-on medical practice methodologies. This will set an expectation early in a clinical career to understand the role the built environment plays in the ease of care and the reduction of inefficient behaviors. This project aspires to be part of the Pebble Project research initiative and will contribute knowledge in areas still uncharted.