Poster Topic: Education

Background:
CAMH's newly launched Simulation Centre fosters new mental health education and training methods to improve quality of care and patient safety, strengthen interprofessional teamwork and enhance student learning. Programs like the electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) training for psychiatry residents to learn how to perform the procedure; read and understand EEG recordings; and obtain informed consent, have integrated simulation. Evaluation data collected for this training includes pre- and post-knowledge questions, self-reported comfort administering ECT and obtaining consent, and effectiveness of learning methods.

Objective:
While simulation is a valuable learning modality, it is also a potential method and source of data to evaluate program quality. With simulation there is also an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of the program through performance and self-reflection data. In the program's third year, we shift our focus to evaluating the relationship between the simulation outcomes and experiences, and educational content of the training program, thereby, assessing residents’ competence on the topics.

Description of the Innovation:
In addition to residents completing the pre- and post-test surveys to assess their knowledge uptake, we propose that residents complete an immediate self-reflection assessment on their performance and experience with the simulation in each of the three simulation training stations. In parallel, observers will complete a checklist for each resident completing the simulation to assess if they successfully completed the skills. At the end of the training session, residents will watch a video of an ECT procedure with multiple errors. They will need to identify at least five errors. By triangulating the residents’ level of knowledge reported in the pre-and post-tests, self-reflection and observation checklist, and types of errors recognized and missed in the video, there is an opportunity to identify areas of the program that show high learning outcomes and areas of the program that require improvement.

Impact:
We plan to test this new methodology in CAMH’s upcoming 2016 ECT training program to evaluate the relationship between the simulation outcomes and experiences, and the educational content of the training program.