Date/Time
Date(s) - March 7, 2023
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm

Registration: https://bit.ly/ThinkTankMarch2023

Assessment in Multi-patient Environments – Towards Validity Evidence for a Simulation-based Approach

Dr. Quang Ngo, Associate Professor, Dept Pediatrics & MERIT Faculty Fellow

Multi-patient care is a necessary skill of physicians in many clinical environments such as wards, intensive care units and busy emergency departments, but how this skill is taught and assessed has only recently begun to be explored. Multi-patient care is a complex construct to assess in the clinical setting owing to the different competencies necessary to carry this out effectively. The actual skills required to function in a multi-patient environment include the ability to multi-task, to be efficient and to be diagnostically accurate, amongst others. Medical simulation can serve as a method for both teaching and assessment of the ability to function in a multi-patient environment.

Most relevant to this project is the transition of Pediatric Emergency Medicine in Canada to a competency based model and the creation of a EPA that attempts to assess multi – patient care skills formally (“Managing the pediatric emergency department to optimize patient care and department flow”). Teaching occurs primarily by principle-based advice or through workplace-based methods such as in situ coaching and observation. Such methods would suggest an ad hoc approach and attainment of the EPA is likely to result in significant variability. In particular, little work has been done on how to optimally assess this construct as a whole. Outside of serious games, nothing has been done to look for validity evidence in a more authentic clinical environment.

Medical simulation can serve as a method for both teaching and assessment of the ability to function in a multi-patient environment. Our primary objective is to gather validity evidence for a multi-patient pediatric emergency dept virtual simulation as an assessment platform for multi-patient care skills in medical learners who care for pediatric patients.