Defining Priority Areas for Critical Care Simulation: A Modified Delphi Consensus Project.

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Healthcare Simulation
• Critical Care Medicine

Background:

• Simulation is vital for critical care education, impacting skill development, assessment, and team performance.
• Balancing simulation costs with educational impact is a key challenge for healthcare educators.
• Prioritizing simulation topics, especially for interprofessional adult and pediatric critical care, remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and prioritize critical care topics for simulation-based educational interventions.
• To guide healthcare educators in developing effective simulation curricula.
• To establish a consensus-based framework for critical care simulation training.

Main Methods:

• A modified Delphi process involving a three-round multi-institutional survey.
• Recruitment of 52 simulation experts from relevant professional societies.
• Topic generation based on critical care board examination content and expert input.

Main Results:

• Achieved consensus on 106 critical care simulation topics across four domains: Diagnosis/Management, Procedural Skills, Teamwork/Communication, and General/Technical Knowledge.
• Prioritized topics based on importance for simulation versus other educational modalities.
• Identified key areas for developing simulation-based critical care curricula.

Conclusions:

• The study provides a prioritized, consensus-driven list of topics for critical care simulation education.
• This framework assists educators in focusing simulation efforts for maximum impact.
• Future research will concentrate on developing specific simulation-based critical care curricula based on these findings.