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Medical errors because of communication failure are common in health care settings. Teamwork training, such as Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS), improves team performance and patient outcomes. Academic institutions seek high-quality, low-cost curricula for interprofessional education (IPE) to prepare learners for clinical experiences before and after graduation; however, most IPE curricula involve lectures, simple tabletop exercises, and in-person simulations and are not readily accessible to geographically distributed and asynchronously engaged learners. To address this need, interprofessional faculty from multiple institutions and specialties created a series of eight screen-based interactive virtual simulation cases featuring typical clinical situations, with the goal of preparing learners to provide safe and effective care in clinical teams. Virtual simulations permit flexible, asynchronous learning on the learner's schedule and allow educators an opportunity to identify gaps in knowledge and/or attitudes that can be addressed during class or forum discussions. In 2016, 1,128 unique users accessed the scenarios. As a result of such virtual activities, learner selection of the appropriate TeamSTEPPS tool increased with progression through the scenarios.

Summary Background Death notification can be challenging for emergency medicine physicians, who have no prior established relationship with the patient or their families. The GRIEV_ING death notification curriculum was developed to facilitate the delivery of the bad news of a patient's death and has been shown to improve learners’ confidence and competence in death notification. Rapid‐cycle deliberate practice (RCDP), a facilitator‐guided, within‐event debriefing technique, has demonstrated an improvement in learners’ skills in a safe learning environment. The aim of this study was to identify whether the use of this technique is an effective method of teaching the GRIEV_ING curriculum, as demonstrated by learners’ improved confidence, cognitive knowledge and performance. Methods A 4‐hour pilot curriculum was developed to educate and assess residents on the delivery of death notification. The curriculum consisted of a pre‐intervention evaluation, the intervention phase, and a post‐intervention evaluation. The cognitive test, critical action checklist, and self‐efficacy/confidence surveys were identical for both pre‐ and post‐intervention evaluations. A Wilcoxon rank‐sum test was used to evaluate differences in scores between pre‐ and post‐intervention groups. Results Twenty‐two emergency medicine residents participated in the study. We observed an increase in median self‐efficacy scores (4.0 [4.0–5.0], p ≤ 0.0001), multiple‐choice GRIEV_ING scores (90.0 [80.0–90.0], p ≤ 0.0001) and performance scores for death notification (48.5 [47.0–53.0], p = 0.0303). Discussion The RCDP approach was found to be an effective method to train emergency medicine residents in the delivery of the GRIEV_ING death notification curriculum. This approach is actionable with few resources except for content experts trained in RCDP methodology and the application of the GRIEV_ING mnemonic.

The pre-brief is an important part of a simulation. It offers participants an orientation to the simulation environment and enables them to reach the intended goals and objectives of the learning activity. This article describes the components of the pre-brief and provides practical tips on how to conduct this step using a simulation. These teaching strategies will help provide a positive learning experience for participants. J Contin Educ Nurs. 2016;47(8):353–355.