The effects of a simulator educational experience on the incidence and nature of human error during the anesthetic management of routine and critical events in a high fidelity patient simulator

Anesthesiologists and pilots work in very similar environments where critical events can happen at any time with potentially serious consequences. The aviation industry has standards whereby pilots are required to receive ongoing regular education in a flight simulator in order to maintain their licences. These experiences are designed to improve performance in the "real-life situation". Human error in medicine has been recognized as an important part of patient morbidity and mortality in the hospital setting. Specifically, critical events occurring in the perioperative period are not uncommon and in a high percentage of cases, human error has contributed to these events. It is our hypothesis that if anesthesiologists, like pilots, receive an educational experience in a high-fidelity patient simulator, then their management of critical events would improve. This is the basis for our proposed study. Our goals are to compare the number of errors and performance scores between groups of anesthesiologists who receive no educational intervention or education using high-fidelity patient simulation. Should performance signficantly improve after a simulation experience,patient safety in the operating room would be expected to improve.