Tag Archives: SimWars

SimWars team places second in regional competition during Simulation Week

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A team of School of Medicine students placed second in a regional SimWars competition in St. Louis.

Students from the School of Medicine’s Emergency Medicine Interest Group put their skills to work in an annual simulation contest at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine’s Great Plains Regional Meeting in St. Louis.

The team of fifth and sixth-year medical students, Nick Keevan, Deven Bhatia, Chris Favier, Dane Stephens, Dylan Schwindt, Luke He, Lauren Bulgarelli, Jordann Dhuse, Manna Varghese, MS5 finished runners-up to a team from Washington University.

The event took place during Healthcare Simulation Week, a nation-wide event to raise awareness about the importance of simulation activities in improving the safety, effectiveness, and efficiency of health care delivery. It also fosters collaboration and celebrates the professionals who work in simulation.

Amy Stubbs, M.D., serves as program director for emergency medicine, and helped prepare the team for the competition.

The contest places teams in an emergency patient scenario in which they must work together to assess a patient, intervene and manage a medical emergency working on a human simulator. Judges review teamwork, communication and clinical decision-making skills.

Throughout Simulation Week in September, simulation education took place at the School of Medicine’s Clinical Training Facility on a daily basis. The simulation events ranged from procedural task training to high-fidelity interprofessional simulations at the undergraduate and graduate medical education levels.

The Simulation Interest Group also attended a regional simulation conference at Johnson County Community College where students learned about a variety of topics including basic debriefing techniques, the various roles of standardized patients and how to execute simulation in unconventional spaces.

UMKC’s PacerMan simulation trainer for transvenous pacing was also showcased at a cardiology conference in Kansas City. Sanjaya Gupta, M.D., program director for UMKC School of Medicine’s electrophysiology fellowship, led a hands-on session featuring the PacerMan.

School of Medicine cardiology fellows regularly use the simulator and faculty development sessions are being planned for the future, said Emily Hillman, M.D., assistant professor of medicine ant medical director for the Clinical Training Facility.

Students place second in regional SimWars competition

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Students from the School of Medicine took part in the annual SimWars competition on Sept. 6 at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Great Plains Regional Forum in Kansas CIty.
Students from the School of Medicine took part in the annual SimWars competition on Sept. 6 at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Great Plains Regional Forum in Kansas CIty.

They may have come up a single point short of winning the championship, but a group of UMKC School of Medicine students made quite an impression in the annual SimWars competition Sept. 6 at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine’s Great Plains Region Research Forum in Kansas City.

It was the third year that UMKC School of Medicine has competed in SimWars and the second year in a row that the School has had two teams in the competition. The contest places four-person teams in an emergency patient scenario in which they must work together to assess the patient, intervene and manage a medical emergency working on a human simulator. Judges review teamwork, communication and clinical decision-making skills.

Emily Hillman, M.D., assistant professor of emergency medicine and assistant program director and clerkship director for emergency medicine, said the team of Brian Weber, Katelyn Harris, Elizabeth Black and Jacob Arnold made naming a winner a difficult decision for the judges.

A team of Dylan Wyatt, Grace Ortman, Amanda Augustine and Janessa Pennington took part in the competition and Payal Patel and Omar Karadghy were the School’s alternates. The teams are made up of fourth, fifth and sixth-year student members of the School’s Emergency Medicine Interest Group.

“They did an awesome job,” Hillman said. “They’ve shown steady improvement every year. The judges even commented on how they have seen the progress and how impressed they were with the students’ performances.”

Hillman said Megan Litzau, who served as president of the EM interest group, was unable to compete because of out-of-town electives but played an integral role in planning weekly training sessions and organizing the teams. Students practiced twice a week from July through September with faculty and residents assisting in the training.

Hillman said the emergency medicine student group has grown in recent years and interest in being a part of the SimWars competition has increased as well.

The competition takes place each year during the regional research forum. This year’s meetings, with a theme of “Mass Disasters,” drew more than 100 people to Kansas City. The forum is designed to increase student, resident, and attending awareness of academic emergency medicine and provide an opportunity to present and discuss original research and other developments that affect clinical practice and education. A medical student forum also offered a panel discussion with regional program directors.

“It was a big deal that we had the opportunity to host this year’s meeting,” Hillman said.