Department of Medicine

Faculty of Medicine

Simulation Program

Providing safe learning environments to replicate real-life scenarios

Why we do simulation?

Simulation is important as it uses high fidelity equipment, simulated patients and cadavers to best replicate real scenarios, allowing us to turn up the heat and get trainees to feel challenged and frustrated in a safe learning environment.

It is our hope that this ultimately results in better patient outcomes and healthier physicians who feel better able to manage the stress of caring for critically ill patients.

Program components

Boot camp: This has been run over the last week of June, but is moving to the first week of July. It is offered to first year residents. It is designed to review equipment and scenarios that the incoming residents will face on call and in code blue situations. Further details on Google Drive

Procedure days: There are two days in the fall and two days in the spring designed to review the indications, contraindications and complications of the common and a few of the uncommon procedures performed by internal medicine physicians. We are covering those procedures required by the royal college (EPAs), but also including a few procedures that have been recommended by the site leads across the maritime provinces that residents would be expected to perform as a staff, but are not taught in residency. Further details on Google Drive

Simulation half days: These sessions occur every Friday morning from September to May. Our main goal with these sessions is to teach and enforce “crisis management skills” (how to keep your cool when you are very stressed out by the clinical scenario in front of you). But, along the way we hope residents will pick up clinical pearls of how to manage the sickest of our internal medicine patients. Further details on Google Drive

Breaking Bad News and Goals of Care sessions: This will be a new part of our simulation program. It will be run as two half day sessions after the completion of our usual Friday simulation sessions. We hope to deliver it for the first time this spring using staff/instructors from multiple departments as a case based program using simulated patients. Dr. David Dupere and Dr. Nabha Shetty have kindly agreed to assist with program development. Further details on Google Drive

Resident Position: We have a resident in the PGY1-3 group that sits on the simulation committee and participates in a simulation research project. Further details on Google Drive

Saint John, NB: The Saint John site runs a comparable simulation program; with bootcamp, high-fidelity simulation, procedure sessions and POCUS scheduled throughout the year. All internal medicine residents on-site are invited to participate in these sessions regardless of their home site. The Saint John residents also participate in the sessions above while on rotation in Halifax.