Improving quality in systems of care: solving complicated challenges with simulation-based continuing professional development.

The delivery of quality health care depends on the successful interactions of practitioners, teams, and systems of care comprising culture. Designing educational programs to improve these interactions is a major goal of continuing professional development, and one approach for educational planners to effect desired changes is simulation-based education. Because simulation-based education affords an opportunity for educators to train health care professionals in environments that resemble clinical practice, this instructional method allows planners to integrate overarching priorities for improvement in health care practice with the training goals of individuals. Educational planners should consider how to structure scenarios to meet training objectives based on the complicated interactions within the health care system. To optimize the benefit of simulation-based experiences, evidence and insights from industrial and organizational psychology, as well as from human factors studies, provide guidance to the planning process, and interdisciplinary studies of complex health care systems can help produce educational programs that improve the quality of health care delivery.