Thanks, Paul. So sadly, I have no disclosures. I'm gonna talk, the first talk today is going to be on looking at your current research questions and developing a plan of attack for your simulation education research. This talk is somewhat introductory for all of you who are out there, but hopefully there are principles that are relevant for kind of everybody. So my goals today, in the next 10 minutes, we're gonna talk about sort of ways that simulation can be used for research. We'll introduce different types of simulation research to you, but focusing on education research in general. And then we'll talk about the components that you need to complete a successful simulation research project. As we go along in this talk, I want you to think about how comfortable you feel with research in general. This is not a talk about research in general. I think none of us, at least up here, are lab people. And so going along in this, sometimes I think of general research as a little bit painful. And then I want you to think about how comfortable you feel with simulation in general. Have you heard of it before? What do you think about it? Sometimes people feel a little bit pain thinking about that too. And we're gonna put it together and talk about simulation research. So that's even more painful sometimes. But the principles are very similar, whether you're talking about research in general or simulation research. So you have to be motivated, right? You have to really wanna do simulation research. It's not easy, and we're a very small community. And you should look for mentorship, but mentorship sometimes isn't in your own institution. You may have to look outside your institution for that. And you wanna formulate a question that's easy to answer and sort of practical. So I was asked to speak about finding, you're formulating your research question. And I think the first thing you have to think about is how do you find a good idea? For me, that's looking at what's keeping me up at night. So what's motivating me? What am I thinking about during the day? And how do I wanna sort of leave my mark and change the world? One way that you can hone in on your specific question is to read everything. So there are journals in medical education, journals in simulation, journals in critical care. They all have small components of simulation education that you can focus on. And this gives you a really great lay of the land to understand what's going on and where the gaps still lie. But that's very general. And so to help you narrow that down, talk to people. We're all sim nerds up here. We love to talk, we love to mentor. And we're available, people in your institution, outside of your institution. Look on social media. The Inspire Simulation Group is a great way to get started. They have journal clubs and grand rounds. And sometimes just that exposure of talking to people, listening to grand rounds can give you that spark of an idea that'll drive that burning question. What's under your skin? What do you wanna know about education? How can we progress the field forward? And remember that this can be anything. So it can be looking at learners, milestones, teaching, processes, and even changing patient outcomes. And then you need to find a good mentor. Mentorship comes in all shapes and forms. So you can have a mentor, we can do a whole talk on mentorship, but you can have a mentor who's within your institution, who you meet with on a monthly basis or a weekly basis. But mentorship can also take the form of just meeting someone in passing at SCCM who gives you one word or one sentence that changes your whole trajectory of your life. I think our president has been mentored to a lot of people. So he's one of those great sort of mentorship examples. So I'm gonna go back to research now. And I think when I started out, I was told you can be in the lab or you can learn about clinical research. And those settings are kind of the setting anchor points that we focus a lot on in traditional research. You can do translational research, and you can also look at educational and QI research. Well, simulation really isn't that different. Simulation is just a tool that we can use to test and analyze our particular research. So simulation also can be laboratory-based or clinically-based. It can be translational. And we can look at educational or QI questions. Within educational research, we often talk about qualitative or quantitative research, and simulation can be used to answer both. So thinking about those big questions, those kind of big general questions that is gonna motivate you and drive you to simulation research, you want to think about your learners, your outcomes, and your process in between. So some examples of this are things like, can a single simulation improve a resident's understanding of a clinical tool? Or does just-in-time simulation improve the learning, improve first-pass success and intubation, or CPR quality? And that's what's going to guide how you answer your question. But of course, you need a good strategy to do that. And this is where your strategic plan comes in. Your question and outcome measure is going to dictate the medium, in this case, we're talking about simulation, that you're gonna use to achieve it. And when you're planning your simulation education research project, similar to any research, you can't prepare too much. This is gonna be an iterative process. So you're gonna ask that question, you're gonna think about your outcome measures, and then you're gonna refine it. You're going to get feedback. You'll change it many, many times. And hopefully come up with a good, ultimately a good project. So there are a couple of tools that we can use to refine these questions. I'm sure everyone's seen the SmartAim. So the SmartAim can help kind of focus you a little bit on what questions to ask, and specifically what parts of those questions you're gonna look at. You wanna be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and relevant, and timely. You wanna think about your who, what, where, when, and why. Because all of these things are gonna be relevant to answering that simulation research question. And using something like PICO or SPIDER, PICO for quantitative studies and SPIDER for qualitative studies, can help focus where you want to go, what your outcome measure is going to be. For qualitative study, you may be looking at generating an hypothesis, not testing one. And so that process is gonna be slightly different. And then you wanna focus on cognitive, on anchor points. So whether these are specific cognitive frameworks, like Kolb's learning cycle, or looking at something like the translational model of simulation, or Kirkpatrick's framework, these are gonna help focus where your impact is going to lie. Some people are really just interested in looking at low-level impact. How are people feeling about a simulation that we did? And this can be helpful in some ways. But the higher your Kirkpatrick's framework, the higher your translational level, the higher your impact. At the highest level, we're talking about impacting patient care outcomes, or systems outcomes. And education is important in doing all of that. When testing your outcome measures, you wanna be very specific. So you wanna sort of think about, get the help of a statistician. How much are you moving the needle? By what point? What are your statistical process measures looking like? How are you going to test those processes? What tool are you going to use? And remember that in simulation, we can use this, it's just another tool. So we can use it as an assessment measure, we can use it as our intervention, or we can use it as both. But you have to have a validated tool to test your hypothesis. Reporting guidelines are also going to help focus your plan of attack. Guidelines are specific, and really what peer-reviewed journals are looking for. They provide a checklist to make sure that you've kind of been complete in your assessment of your research project. And finally, before we move on, you're gonna gather your team. You need a lot of people to help you run a simulation project. So make sure you know who your allies are, who's gonna help you run those simulations, who's gonna gather the data, who's gonna analyze the data. And finally, love what you do, because if you don't love your project, you will not want to finish it. Planning and organization are key. Find your passion, use your smart aims, plan your study based on known frameworks, validated tools, and organizational principles. And when you design your study, if simulation can help, then that's great. If it can't, think about something else, and most importantly, don't give up. These are some resources on how to get involved if you're interested in simulation, and we're all here to talk if you have any questions later. So thank you very much.

simulation education research

developing a plan of attack

research question

medical education and simulation

simulation community