Teamwork and Communication Simulation to Improve Safety in the OR

Simulation in perioperative healthcare is an effective and powerful tool for patient safety. It is used for training in technical skills without putting patients at risk, for improving the performance of interprofessional teams via enhancement of crisis event management, communication, and other teamwork skills, as an adjunct to root cause analysis (RCA) and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) to identify causative factors in actual or potential safety events and generally to improve the culture of safety. Participation in team-based simulation has been shown to improve both safety culture and team performance. Because of the increasing body of evidence pointing toward these outcomes, simulation is increasingly becoming a component of accreditation across healthcare professions. We expect its use to become more tightly interwoven in the fabric of patient safety in the future.