SIM safety solutions

Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

CHEO SIM delivers high-quality educational programs and is committed to improving patient safety and care delivery. The CHEO SIM program combines in-situ and lab-based experiences for CHEO health care providers, community partners and families.

Often during these simulation experiences, latent patient safety events are identified. Since 2016, the CHEO SIM program has been tracking these events through its own Quality Improvement (QI) database, as well as the Safety Reporting System (SRS). Over 100 quality improvement initiatives have been identified through use of simulation at CHEO.

The QI events are generally categorized into one of the following five groups:

1. Education/Training
2. EPIC/Documentation
3. Resources
4. Equipment
5. Policy/Procedure

Protocol testing

The CHEO SIM program is committed to improving patient safety and overall health care delivery. Numerous policies (i.e. Code Blue, Code Orange, Code 8888, COVID-19 protocols) and interventions (i.e. anaphylaxis treatment) have been tested and refined through the use of simulation. Our research group has presented internationally and published our experiences showing that simulation optimizes interventions by testing their efficacy in real-life settings, ensuring the right and most effective intervention is implemented before widespread implementation.

If your health-care team has a policy, procedure or intervention that would benefit from testing using simulation, please email our SIM team to help you get started.