Designing Simulation-based Training Scenarios for Emergency Medical First Responders

Simulation-based training is a promising instructional approach for training military and civilian medical first responders such as EMTs. There is a need for first responder training in cognitively-based skills such as situation assessment and decision making. We are developing a training program for first responders that uses mannequin-based simulation technology effectively to fill this training need for valid meaningful scenarios that can be integrated into the curriculum and applicable for a variety of EMT skill levels. The program will provide detailed scenarios, instructions for administering the program, and measures for performance feedback. Each scenario will exercise a combination of skills and the set of scenarios will span all of the higher-level skills that have been identified as benefiting from targeted training. We discuss here the iterative process of designing and developing the first of these scenarios which has been shown to be capable of tapping into and measuring different skill levels.