Reimagining simulation for quality and safety in healthcare: connecting paradigms, methods, and communities

The healthcare simulation community has embraced its role in improving quality and safety in healthcare. Simulation is an effective tool for the education and training of healthcare professionals as a method to support improvement. This work is impactful and ongoing. More recently, the role of simulation has expanded to directly explore and improve systems, safety challenges, physical spaces, and processes of care within health services, conceptually framed as ‘systems focused’ or translational simulation [1,2,3]. Exemplar projects that have adopted this conceptual framing have demonstrated substantial improvements in quality outcomes and system performance [4,5,6]. But despite these demonstrated impacts, translational simulation methodologies are barely perceptible in most healthcare quality and safety practice. We have more work to do.