As the pace of change in healthcare continues to accelerate, leaders must be adept at navigating the changing consumer and regulatory landscapes. To succeed—and to continue advancing in your career—you’ll have to anticipate needs and act quickly and confidently in new situations.
How does an ambitious leader gain the experience and knowledge to accomplish this? Simulation education is a bridge between classroom learning and real-life clinical experience. The approach has been well-tested and effective in business schools and industry since the late 1950s, and its use in healthcare administration is growing rapidly. A realistic, well-designed simulation exercise provides an opportunity to experience the challenges and strategic decision-making of executive leadership.
ACHE offers a new Health System Simulation course designed for healthcare executives and developed at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Participants act as the executive leadership team of a hospital in a comprehensive strategic exercise, analyzing their institution’s strategic direction and making all decisions central to its successful operation. Teams submit decisions for multiple operating cycles and receive prompt feedback on their hospital’s performance and results.
Here are five ways that participating in simulation-based learning like the Health Simulation Course can shore up your leadership skills, help you advance in your career and give you more confidence the next time you and your team face a difficult new challenge.
1. Experience before you need it.
While simulation is rooted in business school case studies, it’s not new to healthcare. Clinical simulation, whether to review outcomes, train on new equipment or demonstrate rare procedures, has been a growing practice for decades. So have systemwide emergency drills for situations like natural disasters, terrorist attacks and active shooters.
Applying simulation to the major financial and operations decisions that impact the future of patient care is a natural evolution to help administrators be prepared for rapidly changing market conditions.
2. Build your systems thinking.
It can be difficult to gain insight into another department or to see the impact of decisions on other functions, especially in larger hospitals and health systems. Simulation gives you the opportunity to sit in a different chair—even the CEO’s. Facilitated scenarios give you powerful insight into outcomes and consequences across your hypothetical organization. When faced with real-life decisions going forward, you’ll better understand how to develop a comprehensive, cross-functional solution—a critical skill to advance your career, as well.
3. The freedom to make mistakes.
Healthcare organizations have increasingly embraced the move toward high reliability and zero harm. The opportunity to simulate spending, policies, tools, resources and more—without the potential for patient harm—can improve your ability to make educated, strategic risks and anticipate the resulting effects on patient care.
4. Real-time feedback.
Real events and the pace of actual healthcare operations don’t always allow for a review of why events took place or how to improve performance. Well-designed, controlled simulations include debriefings or after-action reviews that richly detail what happened. Participants receive feedback from facilitators on the impact of their actions and from their colleagues about own behavior and performance in their assigned role.
5. Lessons that stick.
Simulation is a learning method particularly suited to how adults learn. It is independent and self-directed learning that connects directly to the “why” behind the lesson, and the real-life implications are imminently clear.
Columbia University faculty have delivered the Health System Simulation course to numerous healthcare executives, and the evaluations show that participants find it among the most powerful learning activities they have experienced. Follow-up studies and surveys reinforce this, particularly regarding improved strategic “on-the-job” decision-making and teamwork and leadership competencies.
The ACHE Health System Simulation is a unique, two-day virtual experience. The first course begins Sept. 22 and will be repeated throughout the year. Learn more and register today.
Effective Experiential Learning: Health System Simulation
How would you run your own hospital? John S. Winkleman, faculty member at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, discusses the innovative new Health System Simulation course delivered in partnership with ACHE. Hear why simulation learning is particularly effective for healthcare leaders, and how you can see what happens when you’re in the driver’s seat.