Telesimulation: An Innovative Tool for Health Professions Education

Telesimulation is a new and innovative concept and process that has been used to provide education, training, and assessment in health-related fields such as medicine. This new area of simulation, and its terminology, has its origins within the past decade. The face validity and ability to provide the benefits of simulation education to learners at off-site locations has allowed the wide and rapid adoption of telesimulation in the field of medical education. Telesimulation has been implemented in areas such as pediatric resuscitation, surgery, emergency medicine, ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia in anesthesiology, nursing, and neurosurgery. However, its rapid expansion and current use has outgrown its recent description less than a decade ago. To date, there is no unifying definition of telesimulation that encompasses all the areas where it has been used while simultaneously allowing for growth and expansion in this field of study. This article has two main objectives. The first objective is to provide a comprehensive and unifying definition of telesimulation that encompasses all the areas where it has been used while allowing for growth and expansion in the field of study. The secondary objective is to describe the utility of telesimulation for emergency medicine educators in the context of the current evidence to serve as a background and framework that educators may use when considering creating educational programs that incorporate telecommunication and simulation resources. This article is complementary to the large group presentation where this new comprehensive and unifying definition was introduced to the simulation community at the International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare in January 2016.