Greetings friends of WISER,
There is something irresistible about the allure of a space newly reconstructed, with the smell of fresh paint, and boxes arriving filled with new equipment and toys that will delight our faculty, as well as the current and future students as we move forward. Excitedly, we are launching another satellite center of WISER that is located in the heart of the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine. Multiple members of our staff have been working on this huge project over the last two and a half years in some form or fashion.
New simulation equipment, new AV infrastructure, and an exciting co-location with the University of Pittsburgh Standardized Patient Program will bring a new area of capabilities to expand our simulation efforts with a heavy emphasis on the School of Medicine as well as the other schools of health sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. Further, this new satellite facility is giving us capabilities adjacent to where actual clinical care is occurring at our flagship hospital.
Continuing the theme of a busy year, we have recently successfully transitioned through another start of an academic year for graduate medical education. Hundreds of simulations, courses, new interns and junior residents have successfully completed WISER simulation-based education programs that contribute significantly to quality initiatives, amongst the most important, patient safety. We are excited to play an ongoing role in this effort serving the needs of the UPMC Health System.
We recently completed another round of faculty development training associated with the Improving Simulation Instructional Methods (iSIM) course. We were fortunate to be able to put several WISER staff members from our curriculum and operations department through the dynamic faculty training that occurs during iSIM. I believe this to be immensely helpful for us to be able to continue providing high-quality simulation services that allow for successful simulation-based education programs to continue with our support.
To quote the feedback from one of our curriculum team staff members regarding the iSIM course, “This knowledge will greatly benefit our team during course creation, enhancing our understanding of the instructors’ objectives throughout their time at WISER.” This feedback reminded me of the fact that it is vitally important that we continuously find ways to invest in our staff, as well as our faculty members to continuously improve upon our high-quality team that allows us to be so successful.
I hope that your last few months have been as productive and rewarding as ours! As a director I can truly say every day I find it rewarding to think about the downstream impact we are having on the development of current and future health care providers as well as the patients that we ultimately serve.
Until next time, Happy Simulating!
-Paul