ISP25: health crisis management training for public health residents in France, a pilot and feasibility study

Public health residents play a critical role in crisis management but operate under administrative and population-level constraints that differ fundamentally from traditional clinical "bedside" Crisis Resource Management (CRM). There is a need to adapt existing training models to this specific institutional context.

This study aims to (i) describe a simulation-based training model specifically adapted to the French administrative context for public health residents; (ii) assess the feasibility and acceptability of this pilot program; and (iii) provide a translation and cultural adaptation of two assessment tools (the Ottawa CRM Global Rating Scale and the Modified Simulation Effectiveness Tool [SET-M]) for the Francophone community.

We conducted a prospective pilot feasibility study with a convenience sample of six public health residents (n = 6) in the Île-de-France region. The intervention combined a theoretical session on French health administration with a high-fidelity simulation exercise involving role-play in a crisis room. We collected descriptive data on participant satisfaction and self-reported skill progression using the French-adapted questionnaires.

Participants reported high satisfaction and strong acceptance of the training format, with all residents agreeing on the utility of the prebriefing and debriefing components. Descriptive analysis of individual trajectories showed positive trends in self-assessed leadership and communication skills. Conversely, a stagnation or decrease in problem-solving scores for some participants suggested a pedagogical "recalibration" of self-efficacy (potential mitigation of the Dunning-Kruger effect) following the immersive simulation.

This pilot study demonstrates the feasibility and high acceptability of adapting CRM training for public health residents acting in administrative capacities. It provides the first French-adapted assessment tools for this specific population. Due to the limited sample size, future research with larger cohorts and controlled designs is necessary to formally evaluate the effectiveness of this training model.