It’s Friday Night at the ER!

The week might be over, but the simulation is just beginning. 

Friday Night at the ER, a tabletop simulation experience from Breakthrough Learning, challenges learners with managing a hospital during a simulated 24-hour period. The experience is made available to health-care teams through UAB Clinical Simulation, one of which is UAB Medicine’s Center for Patient Flow (CPF). 

“It allows our unit-based staff to see a 50,000-foot view and how decisions impact the entire system as a whole,” said Ashlea Herrero, the center’s senior director of Patient Throughput. 

According to Breakthrough Learning, the simulation challenges teams “to deliver high-quality service at a low cost within the allocated time,” while encouraging applied systems thinking, cross-functional collaboration, critical thinking and decision making, innovation and creative problem solving, and distributed leadership. “But just like in any organization, the scenario is complex. How to succeed isn’t obvious, at first.” 

Typically, Herrero said, learners walk away with an understanding of systems thinking and how important their individual role is to the whole system. 

“There are system strategies in place which are sometimes harder to see when focused on just the individual unit level,” Herrero added. 

Ultimately, she said, the experience teaches learners to trust the system by focusing on what they can do at the unit level to facilitate a positive impact on the system level.  

CPF facilitates the simulation quarterly as part of its Nursing Leadership and Unit Secretary orientations and as needed for other parties, including the House Staff Council and Master of Science in Healthcare Administration students.  

And although this is a tabletop simulation that facilitators host outside of the simulation lab, Clinical Simulation staff is always on hand to offer support. 

“Clinical Simulation is our favorite group to work with!” Herrero said. “They create an environment where learning comes alive, and we are able to teach systems thinking in a complex environment in such a fun, interesting and understandable way.” 

To learn more about how Friday Night at the ER can help your team or department, email simulation@uabmc.edu. 

UAB Medicine’s Clinical Simulation program offers opportunities for individuals and teams across UAB Medicine and beyond to practice before they deliver care. We encourage all who provide and support patient care to “Sim First.” Together, we can put our patients’ safety first.