Abstract:
Medical and healthcare concepts and skills are complex and not easy to learn. Those who have learnt find it easier, and tend to forget the difficulty of the younger following on. The conceptual and the practical enjoy a particularly strong connection in medicine and healthcare.
No wonder then that training in medical and health matters often draws on technologies that naturally bring the two into close interdependence. One of these is simulation/gaming (simulation, games, role-play, so-called serious games, and related methodologies). However, we are sometimes disappointed by the lower than expected learning outcomes from simulation/gaming. One major reason for this disappointment is that the activity that generates the real, deep and long-lasting learning is either done badly or not done at all. In my talk, I will attempt to provide a rationale for debriefing, to draw a impressionistic picture of the current situation as I see it, to outline some of the key characteristics of debriefing, and to illustrate how it may be done.
