Promote excellence in clinical care, advance patient safety and improve multidisciplinary team performance through high-fidelity medical simulation.

Emergency Residents (bi-weekly rotations) 36 total, Internal Medicine (bi-weekly rotations) 120 total, Cardiology Fellows 6 (monthly rotations), Trauma 8 (weekly rotations), Surgery (Three times per month, 6-8 per month), Pedi (40/month), Anesthesia  (3X per month rotations) 24 total, Medical Students, EMS, Lifestar, Nursing ICU Core Training (12 per monthly rotation),  RON (12 per monthly rotation), Respiratory Care (12 per monthly rotation), Rapid Respond Team Training (6 per weekly rotations)

Approx # students who participated in simulation for 2007:> 1700

Improving patient safety and clinical outcomes through improving team work  in crisis management (often focusing on high risk low frequency scenarios).

Validate that the healthcare teams have the necessary expertise each time they encounter a challenging medical situation.

The simulators are used to improve the quality and realism in the delivery of healthcare training for all disciplines. They can include teamwork training and evaluation as well as clinical decision making skills. 

Often courses are developed in collaboration with Risk Management and Hospital wide and individual departments' Continual Quality Improvement Goals, we take all sentinel events and other CQI cases and incorporate them into the high fidelity simulation to improve knowledge, skills and clinical management of clinicians to improve patient safety.

The Simulation Center is the only one of it's kind in Connecticut. We are hospital based and our focus is a multi-disciplinary approach to patient care.

In April of 2008 our Simulation Center was featured on the National Geographic Science Channel, we recently have been accredited by the American College of Surgery as a level 1 training facility, and have been recognized by the Laerdal Corporation as a Center of Excellence since 2006.

Publications and Presentations:

• Comparison of the Airtraq Optical Laryngoscope to Direct Laryngoscopy By Paramedics in a Manikin Model for Easy and Difficult Intubations poster
• Emergency Airway Rescue with the Combitube. poster
• "Error Identification in the Implementation of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign Guidelines Using Manikin-based Simulation"- poster presentation at SCCM 2007
• Simulation Education for the Management of Blunt Head Trauma poster
• Chapter in Simulators in Critical Care and Beyond  Society of Critical Medicine

Debriefing The Basics

We also provide 3 Airway Workshops each year at the Society of Critical Care Medicine's annual meeting (have done yearly for the last 8 years)

• Connecticut League for Nursing
• Forming an alliance with CT based Nursing programs currently utilizing simulation training to improve their training programs, with hopes to mainstream the simulation education being provided per program to these students
• Research (all disciplines)
• Standardization of evaluation tools
• Teamwork training and development EMS and helicopter team (Lifestar) Pedi