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Simulation News

The Office of Interprofessional Simulation for Innovative Clinical Practice (OIPS) held seven crash cart feedback sessions throughout the months of August and September to test the effectiveness of a virtual crash cart activity versus an in-person crash cart activity that will help support the training/sustainment of skills for different healthcare providers. During the crash cart feedback sessions, healthcare professionals participated in two crash cart activities: a virtual android application and a hands-on crash cart scavenger hunt. In the in-person crash cart activity, healthcare providers were provided with a crash cart and a scavenger hunt case stem that contained 6 different phases in a patient coding scenario. Each phase in the scenario was designed to have the participants look through each drawer of the crash cart to find the items in order to save the coding patient. Once the participants completed the in-person activity, they participated in a virtual crash cart activity. The virtual crash cart, provided by Engineering & Computer Simulations, Inc. (ECS), is a web-based Android application where users were able to test their crash cart knowledge in an emergent patient scenario. Through this tablet application, there are two modes: an interactive learning mode where the users had the ability to search through all of the drawers of the UAB crash cart model and familiarize themselves with the cart; the second mode is an interactive gaming mode where the users were timed and scored based on whether they chose the correct item from the crash cart. During the virtual activity, healthcare providers were able to first familiarize themselves with the practice mode and then test their knowledge in the timed gaming mode. In the gaming mode, the virtual physician asked for a specific item from the crash cart and the user gave the item to the virtual patient. In this unique ECS virtual crash cart system, the virtual patient never died, but got progressively sick when the wrong item or drug was given. To determine the most effective crash cart training method, each healthcare professional assessed each activity and provided online survey feedback.