<i>2008 Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference</i>

Abstract

“Medical Simulation Bill before Congress; National Consensus Conference to Identify Key Priority Areas . . .” (Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) press release, May 28, 2008) Together with colleagues across health care, emergency medicine (EM) has played an important national role in the development of medical simulation as an academic discipline, a field in which realistic artificial environments are used to practice medical skills, procedures, and protocols. In fact, the field is currently the subject of a bill before Congress designed to enhance federal support for simulation initiatives nationwide.1 Across the country, growth in the use of high-fidelity mannequin simulators among EM residency programs increased from 29% to 85% over the past 5 years;2 entire residency curricula at some programs are now structured around simulation.3 Given this extraordinary growth, the 2008 Academic Emergency Medicine (AEM) Consensus Conference, “The Science of Simulation in Healthcare: Defining and Developing Clinical Expertise,” was organized to help define a national research agenda for maximizing effective use of simulation across undergraduate, graduate, and continuous medical education. Because EM operates at the intersection of multiple specialties, we hoped the conference would be of multidisciplinary interest. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine’s report “To Err is Human”4 identified patient simulation as an opportunity for enhancing medical safety in the same way that flight simulation is used to enhance quality in aviation. In 2002, a Simulation Interest Group formed within the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) to explore EM’s use of dynamic simulation technology. At that time, the focus was primarily on the use of sophisticated robot-mannequins to train anesthesiologists in operative crisis management. An international Society for Simulation in Healthcare was formed in 2004 with input from the SAEM Interest Group leadership, including membership on the new society’s board of directors. In 2005, the SAEM Board of Directors convened a Simulation Task Force to intensify SAEM exploration in this area, which by then had attracted the attention of federal funding agencies, as well as legislative and regulatory bodies. In 2007, the Task Force became a standing committee focusing on technology in medical education. The field of simulation within SAEM is now a unified effort of both the original interest group and the task force/committee structure, which maintains an informational website, a case bank in collaboration with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) MedEdPORTAL, a biannual newsletter, and a consultation service to assist academic development in the field. The SAEM simulation groups have worked to collaborate with other EM groups on the topic, including the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), the American Academy of Emergency Medicine (AAEM), and the EM Council of Residency Directors (CORD). These efforts complement dedicated simulation initiatives that have also emerged as part of other medical and surgical specialty society agendas, including those of the American College of Surgeons and the American Society of Anesthesiologists. After publishing an initial review and assessment of research opportunities in the field,5 the SAEM Simulation Task Force proposed simulation as the special topic for the annual Consensus Conference sponsored by the editors of AEM. The topic was selected in a competitive process; the project required 12 months of planning with the assistance of both an AEM Consensus Conference Planning Committee and an expert Faculty Advisory Group (see Appendix A for full listings). The end result was the full-day conference upon which this special issue of the Journal is based, held in Washington, DC, on May 28, 2008. Approximately 325 individuals attended the event (see listing of registrants included later in this issue), and nearly 40 original manuscript submis