Multiple patient encounter simulations in emergency medicine

The use of simulation-based education in emergency medical curricula has been widely established and reported in the literature. The simulations, however, are often a single patient simulation. That is, either one, or a small group of learners, approach one simulated manikin or human actor patient and perform tasks as appropriate to the educational learning objectives. Unfortunately, however, this does not mirror clinical practice with clinicians reportedly spending at least 21% of their time multitasking and performing simultaneous activities due to the very nature of their work.1 Reports of multiple patient encounter simulations (MPESs), whereby learners are exposed to more than one patient simultaneously, are scarce. Kobayashi et al2 ,3 describe using multiple high-fidelity manikins to test cognitive strategies and teamwork effectiveness when dealing with multiple clinical scenarios and also outline a prehospital disaster scenario combining a mixture of manikins and actors to test a prehospital response to a ‘dirty bomb’ incident. We describe how an emergency medical-based MPES was staged for a group of emergency medicine (EM) trainees, challenges associated with MPES as well as the potential benefits MPESs have to offer.