Elsevier

Journal of Surgical Education

Volume 74, Issue 6, November–December 2017, Pages 1135-1141
Journal of Surgical Education

Education Institutes
The Steinberg Centre for Simulation and Interactive Learning at McGill University,☆☆

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2017.05.022Get rights and content

Simulation allows for learner-centered health professions training by providing a safe environment to practice and make mistakes without jeopardizing patient care. It was with this goal in mind that the McGill Medical Simulation Center was officially opened on September 14, 2006, as a partnership between McGill University, the Faculty of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals. Its mandate is to provide state-of-the-art facilities to support simulation-based medical and allied health education initiatives.

Since its inception, the center, recently renamed the Steinberg Center for Simulation and Interactive Learning (SCSIL), has undergone a major expansion and logged more than 130,000 learner visits. Educational activities are offered at all levels of medical and allied health care training, and include standardized patient encounters, partial task trainers, multidisciplinary courses, and high-fidelity trainers, among many others. In addition to its educational mandate, the center also supports an active research program, programs to enhance collaboration with disciplines outside of health care to spur innovation, and community outreach initiatives.

Section snippets

History

Simulation allows for learner-centered health professions training by providing a safe environment to practice and make mistakes without jeopardizing patient care. It was with this goal in mind that the McGill Medical Simulation Center was officially opened on September 14, 2006, as a partnership between McGill University, the Faculty of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals. Its mandate was to provide state-of-the-art facilities to support simulation-based medical and allied health education

Space

The center is located in Downtown Montreal near the Faculty of Medicine buildings and McGill University main campus. It occupies 31,000 ft2 of physical space and includes a 60-seat conference room, 16 technical areas for procedural skills training, 10 clinical examination rooms with one-way mirror for performing physical examination and communication skills, and a high-fidelity suite used for team training. The rooms may also be repurposed as needed. All simulation areas have audiovisual

Governance

The SCSIL is overseen by an Advisory Board that meets once every 6 months. Before 2015, Advisory Board membership was limited to members of the McGill Faculty of Medicine. In 2015, the board was reconstituted to better align with the renewed vision of the center. Membership now includes representation from other Faculties besides Medicine (e.g., management), as well as members from outside the university (e.g., the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada) and the community. This

Learners and Educational Programs

Since its inception, the center has logged more than 130,000 learner visits. Of these, more than 64,000 occurred in the last 4 academic years. Most learners comprise medical students, nursing students, physical and occupational therapy students, and residents. The center also provides training to non-McGill health care professionals, industry, and the Canadian military (Fig. 5).

Educational activities range from teaching procedural skills on synthetic and real-tissue models to communication

Curriculum Design

The center provides support for curriculum design and implementation to educators planning courses at the center. This is done in consultation primarily with the Education Manager and Operations Manager, who offer considerable expertise in advising and planning for the necessary equipment, learner flow, instructor/learner ratios, and time allocation among other considerations. In the future, formalized consultations with trained educators to facilitate effective curriculum design will be

Research

Numerous research activities are supported and run through the center. Several of these are conducted in collaboration with the McGill Center for Medical Education, with the Faculty’s various clinical departments, and with universities throughout the world. The center supports 2 full-time research fellows annually. Many of the educational activities at the center involve a research component. Some of the current projects being undertaken at the center include (1) simulation-based medical

Summary

The Simulation Center at McGill University was established 11 years ago to provide a venue for simulation-based learning activities for the Faculty of Medicine and its affiliated hospitals. Since that time, the Steinberg Center for Simulation and Interactive Learning has evolved, and demand for access across the health care professions has ballooned tremendously and continues to increase. This is no doubt related to the increased emphasis on simulation-based training in the health sciences, as

Contact Information

Operations manager: Philippe Legault, MSc, MBA ([email protected]).

Education manager: Niki Soilis, MEd ([email protected]).

Program administrator: Genevieve Cyr, MSc ([email protected]).

Reference (1)

  • T. Di Genova et al.

    The Academic Half-Day redesigned: Improving generalism, promoting CanMEDS and developing self-directed learners

    Paediatr Child Health

    (2015)

Cited by (3)

Funding: The SCSIL is supported through a generous donation by the late Mr. and Mrs. Arthur and Blema Steinberg, without whose passion and commitment for simulation and improving health care training, the achievements of the center could never have been realized.

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Disclosure: Author Mueller has nothing to disclose and Dr. Aggarwal is a consultant for Applied Medical.

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