Using Simulations to Elevate Training Outcomes

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Simulation-based training is transforming learning in high-stakes environments like healthcare. Joe Corvino, senior client executive with Laerdal Medical Corporation, a company at the forefront of healthcare simulation, shares how Laerdal’s innovative solutions—like their maternity and resuscitation simulators—are enhancing skill development and ultimately saving lives.

 

Show Notes:

Simulation is transforming healthcare training and saving lives. Here are the top takeaways from our conversation with Joe Corvino of Laerdal Medical.

• Simulation Enhances Competence & Emergency Preparedness – High-fidelity simulations help healthcare professionals develop critical skills in real-life scenarios, improving decision-making and response times in high-stakes situations.  
• Technology is Advancing Training Effectiveness – From high-fidelity mannequins that breathe and bleed to AI-powered conversational simulations and VR-based learning, technology is making medical training more realistic and accessible.  
• Resuscitation Quality Improvement (RQI) is Revolutionizing CPR Training – Research shows that CPR skills deteriorate within months, but Laerdal’s RQI program helps healthcare professionals maintain competence through frequent, low-dose training rather than traditional classroom sessions.  
• Simulation is Expanding Beyond Healthcare – While healthcare is a major focus, simulation-based training is applicable across industries, providing safe, immersive environments for learning in aviation, emergency response, and beyond.  
   

Learn more about Laerdal Medical

Connect with Joe Corvino  

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Transcript:

Susan Cort: [00:00:00] Simulation based training can enhance teamwork, communication, and decision making in high stakes environments like healthcare. Advances in technology make today's simulators even more impactful.

Joe Corvino: The goal of our simulation is to focus on competence and emergent situations. So, by creating a tool that can be used to evaluate skill development, competence, team-based care, and systematic challenges as well, is really the goal.

So, using tools such as birthing simulators that can easily be set up and create realistic experiences for these providers that leads to more positive outcomes is ultimate the goal.

Susan Cort: That's Joe Corvino, Senior Client Executive with Laerdal Medical Corporation. Joe joins d’Vinci CEO Luke Kempski and me to explore how training simulations are transforming learning and saving lives, next on Powered by Learning.[00:01:00]

Announcer: Powered by learning is brought to you by d’Vinci Interactive. d’Vinci’s approach to learning is grounded in 30 years of innovation and expertise. We use proven strategies and leading technology to develop solutions that power learners to improve quality and boost performance. Learn more at dvinci.com.

Luke Kempski: Welcome Joe. It's good to see you again, Joe. Glad you could join us.

Joe Corvino: Hey, thanks for having me. Hi, uh, Susan and Luke. It's great to be here. It's been a while since we connected, Luke. So happy to happy to join the podcast.

Susan Cort: Well, thanks for joining us. And I'm excited to have this conversation with you. And I know Luke is as well.

You have such a unique background and so many great experiences, Joe. You know, many of our guests get into learning and development from other roles, but you actually started in training before moving into sales. So talk a little bit about your career and how your experience helps you help your customers.

Joe Corvino: Sure. First again, thank you for having me on the podcast. I appreciate it. I do have kind of an interesting background. I have a [00:02:00] bachelor's degree in communications and right out of college I got into broadcasting and worked for WGAL Channel 8 as a as a cameraman on did that for a couple years and then eventually we just loved working with reporters and creating stories and transitioned out of that role into more of an instructional technology instructional design space in higher education.

Working with faculty developing content for courses that could be put online at the time. Blackboard was a popular learning management system coming up, dating myself a little bit, but, um, and then from there I was lucky enough to get a job at, uh, St. Joseph's University based in Lancaster, used to be Pennsylvania College of Health Sciences, in their, uh, simulation center, which was very intriguing from a learning and development standpoint.

Because we were working to create experiences with faculty to embed their learners into real life situations where it was safe for them to exist and make mistakes and learn from those mistakes, which really helped the learning stick, which was super exciting to me. So I was in that [00:03:00] role for about 12 years, we were able to, um, I was along that journey where healthcare education was continuing to develop.

And we built a new simulation center and along the way, my territory manager from Laerdal, one of the simulation vendors came to me and said, Hey, do you think you'd be interested in this role? And, um, I took the plunge, so to speak into a sales, uh, consultative sales role, which I've been in for about seven years now working for Laerdal Medical.

And it's been fantastic. I've really been able to see Eastern Pennsylvania and all the different facets of healthcare, health care education that exists in that area. And it's, it's just been really exciting.

Susan Cort: Well, the rest is history, as they say. Well, Joe, the evolution of Laerdal Medical is also so interesting.Talk about that.

Joe Corvino: Sure. Great question, Susan. So, uh, founded in 1940 by Asmund Laredal, who was a toy maker. Uh, he really focused on creating dolls and molded trucks and cars. They're called Tom T. Cars and Annie, uh, [00:04:00] dolls. So he started off by creating imitation wounds and from that transitioned into resuscitation mannequins after being contacted by, uh, the Norwegian Health Department.

And these resuscitation mannequins are the Annie Annie are you OK CPR mannequins that we all know very well.

Susan Cort: And, that was, that was back in the sixties, I think you said, right?

Joe Corvino: Correct. So early sixties, he was approached by some engineers and physicians in Baltimore to develop these resuscitation, uh, mannequins.

And from there, it essentially just took off. They were, uh, they did some research and published in the journal of American Medical Association in the early sixties. Focusing, uh, it was the first large scale research training program. for school children. So just really focusing on saving lives and that initial start of CPR.

In 2010, the American Heart Association estimated that roughly 350 million people around the world have been trained on CPR, most of them on recess Ann. [00:05:00] Uh, so when you hear any, any, are you okay from the Michael Jackson song or anything around CPR, um, the AHA and Laerdal all come to mind.

Susan Cort: Yeah. And it all started, all started with toys, which is just so incredible.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, definitely a great story. So Joe, I was on LinkedIn and I was scrolling and I had one of those scroll-stop moments when I saw the video. Of the maternity simulator, that was really fascinating, caught my attention, caught my attention so much that I reached out to you and asked if you would join us on the podcast.

Can you talk a little bit about that maternity simulator?

Joe Corvino: Absolutely. So a lot of what Laerdal does is based in research and with the focus of helping save lives. So, through that research, we found that four and five pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Uh, and we've long been providing a healthcare simulation within maternity.

But through Laerdal Global Health, which is an organization within Laerdal that focuses on underserved countries and, um, [00:06:00] helping babies breathe and helping mothers survive. And what Laerdal does is when we sell Mama Anne, which is the video of the simulator that you saw on LinkedIn, uh, we gift a lower fidelity simulator to the underserved country in an effort to help them train and get better at increasing their survival rates.

So to do that, we also found that, uh, in the United States, there's some shocking statistics as well. And, uh, last year we had a conference in a sales conference in New Orleans, and New Orleans is one of those spaces where there's challenges, uh, in terms of maternal morbidity. And, um, survival of infants. So our executive chairman Tore Laerdal was intrigued by this and is always looking to assist in, um, better outcomes.

And to do that, we donated a series of CPR anytime kits to increase CPR awareness as well as Mama Natalie [00:07:00] simulators, which is a wearable birthing simulator to the health authority, the EMS organizations in the local school district. Uh, so in that, that's a low fidelity solution that can impact care at a local level.

I like to post those clips, uh, on LinkedIn because it's intriguing how the, how quickly the technology has changed, which allows us to provide realistic simulations to increase better outcomes.

Susan Cort: And you've really seen success with learners to improve the outcomes for moms and babies.

Joe Corvino: Yeah, uh, specifically the goal of our simulation is to focus on competence and emergent situations.

So by creating a tool, that can be used to evaluate skill development, competence, team based care and systematic challenges as well is really the goal. Uh, so using tools such as these birthing simulators that can easily be set up and create realistic experiences for [00:08:00] these providers, uh, that leads to more positive outcomes is ultimately the goal.

Luke Kempski: Great paint a picture for us, Joe, of what a simulator lab looks like and what, what are the components in the lab that are your products?

Joe Corvino: I'm lucky enough to be in a position where I could see a fair amount of labs within Eastern Pennsylvania and help those customers and consult with them on what these labs look like.

So, and they can range in size from a couple hundred square feet to a couple thousand square feet. And they typically include a, uh, a control room that houses the computers and the functionality for the simulators. Realistic spaces that might look like an ICU, a medical surge unit, a nurse's station, an OR.

So, realistic spaces so these learners can exist within that simulated environment. Um, there are also debriefing rooms, which is key to these experiences. So, after the experience is finished, they move into the debriefing [00:09:00] space. They might re watch a video that was recorded of them. During the simulation, and then they can reflect on that experience, and that's really where the learning is connected from the classroom didactic experience to the hands-on learning that happens within the simulation center.

There's a lot of other key spaces, but there's one other very key space that we see within simulation centers, and that's a clinical skills lab or clinical skills environment where learners can practice the essential fundamental skills. Uh, and taking care of a patient that could be anything from physical assessment to, uh, NG tube, nasogastric tube insertions, uh, things like that.

Luke Kempski: And, uh, where do your products fit in?

Joe Corvino: Yeah, so we have a number of different, uh, products from, Task Trainers that could be used for specific skill development to high fidelity patient simulators, uh, that are existing within those realistic clinical spaces. And we also have another product called SimCapture, which is essentially our learning management system for [00:10:00] simulations, so that will help with capturing reporting data, evaluation data and learners as they travel through these experiences within the simulation center.

Luke Kempski: And are these simulations preprogrammed or do your customers take your software and the simulator and create the simulation?

Joe Corvino: Yeah, that's a great question. So, it depends. It depends on the customer.

We do have a database of preprogrammed scenarios. Uh, that they include everything from a patient history, how to set up the simulation, how to program the simulator, or it may be preprogrammed for the staff already. And we have customers who create their own. They might create them on the fly, or they might pull them from the American Heart Association, from the National League for Nursing.

There's a series of scenarios out there as well. So, it just depends. It depends on what their goals are and what their clinical experience needs are.

Luke Kempski: You mentioned you have a high fidelity and a lower [00:11:00] fidelity, like, what do you mean by that? And how, how does that come into play, especially with a simulation?

Joe Corvino: Sure. So, uh, fidelity really speaks to how realistic the simulator or the solution is so low fidelity most often is a lower cost solution that is great for repetitive skill development and practice. So it might be an IV arm. It could be an airway head for intubation. Training tools such as that usually exist in that clinical skills environment or in a, in a hospital setting, they might, uh, there might be an airway head that's utilized by the anesthesia department to practice intubation procedures.

Once you move over into the high-fidelity area, it's more of a full body simulator that can breathe and blink has active chest rise. It speaks, uh, it has full pulses. Uh, fluids on board so you can simulate secretions and bleeding and measure CPR quality that really amps up the realism. So part of [00:12:00] what I like to do is really do a needs assessment with the customer and figure out, okay, what are you trying to accomplish?

What are your learning goals and educational outcomes that you want to see, and then we'll look at what products or what solutions can help you get there.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, that makes sense. If you know, if you're looking at interdependent systems and things like that, you. You're evolving to really recreate some very sophisticated interrelated systems versus if you just want to train on one thing and practice, practice, practice, um, and then do variations on the scenarios.

You don't need all of that extra bells and whistles, I guess. So, um, I know you also have a product that's around resuscitation quality improvement. Um, or I guess you call it RQI. Can you talk a little bit about how that system works?

Joe Corvino: RQI, Resuscitation Quality Improvement. So, research shows us that CPR steals decline within three to six months of actually doing them.

Despite efforts by healthcare providers and [00:13:00] motivated practitioners, uh, patients are still receiving poor quality CPR about 50 percent of the time. And cardiac arrest survival rates currently average less than 26%. So, there’s a need in this area to transition from standard classroom-based simulation to a competency based training program for high quality CPR to increase patient outcomes.

So that's where RQI comes into place. Uh, it's a partnership between Laerdal and the American Heart Association, and, uh, it's designed to implement learning on the unit, uh, for these practitioners rather than pulling them off their day-to-day unit to sit in the classroom. And it's low dose, high frequency training.

So it's continual training to maintain that level of competence so it doesn't drop off over a two year period. Thankfully, they may not be using those CPR skills on a daily basis or even a monthly basis, so they are going to degrade. But being within this, uh, RQI platform, they're able to maintain [00:14:00] that level of competence.

Susan Cort: Joe, is that also where you're able to help not just the individual learner, but the, the healthcare system as well to kind of see where there might be, um, kind of an institutional challenge that they can get ahead of?

Joe Corvino: Absolutely. So, uh, I have some statistics here. There's, uh, about 1. 4 million healthcare providers who have enrolled in the RQI program.

Uh, so this program has been around since 2018, and at that point it focused, uh, strictly on hospital and healthcare systems. And what we're seeing some of our customers do, so Penn State Hershey Medical Center is part of the RQI program, as is, uh, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. And what we're seeing them do is they implement this program, and then they'll run simulations on the unit.

Unannounced to then test those skills. So they're able to really look at that, how that competence based education transfers to real time situation. So you can look at individual skills. You can look at team based care, closed loop [00:15:00] communication, as well as test the system as well. So you can test how long it took them to respond and how long it took them to first respond.

Dose of a medication or CPR. So they are translating that into practice and, uh, doing research studies on that as well. Um, so it's pretty exciting to see that, um, early adopters, how they've been moving this along. The VA was an early adopter as well.

Luke Kempski: Are there like scripted scenarios that kind of set up the simulation and variables that are manipulated to make those scenarios different.

Joe Corvino: Yeah. So what they'll do is they'll often run like a mock code blue situation, which could be a cardiac arrest, uh, that has a specific algorithm that they follow, uh, for advanced cardiac life support. Uh, so there'll be an unannounced case that, uh, they call Code Blue on, and it will be a specific case like cardiac arrest, where they'll have to run through that algorithm that they learned.

Uh, either on the RQI cart [00:16:00] specifically. Um, or within that ACLS protocol.

Luke Kempski: in that scenario, um, or in in the scenarios that go around it, I would imagine, you know, that's not just learning to do CPR, especially if it's a team-based response, right? There's a lot of other learning factors that That come into play if you're working as a team to respond to a situation.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Joe Corvino: Yeah, absolutely. You're right. CPR is one aspect of that kind of ecosystem of care. Uh, and that's where I usually found simulation to be very interesting in that you can look at and evaluate, uh, individual skills, but also that team-based environment. And the process that's involved in that as well.

So, uh, some customers and institutions will run, say, a Code Blue scenario just to look at process and quality improvement on that is hands on care all the way through, you know, where the code cart lives in that situation on the unit. Is it accessible? Is it [00:17:00] standardized? Did the staff know where the equipment is within that code card?

So you could create a simulation that's really focused on looking at CPR competence, and it opens up this, uh, essentially a needs assessment for the system to see where, where they may need additional education to be developed.

Luke Kempski: Right. And, uh, so, you know, mostly what we've been talking about so far have been simulations that have involved mannequins and body parts.

And are you also doing anything with like virtual reality where it's more, I guess, confined in terms of not needing as much space? And then maybe, uh, less expensive from a space standpoint or, or, or ability to scale with using more people than maybe, or you're able to get to a physical space.

Joe Corvino: Yes, just in the last three to five years, virtual reality has really taken off within health care simulation, and it's due to a couple reasons.

Like you mentioned, there's space constraints. Not everyone has a large simulation [00:18:00] center with many different assets and simulation family members, so to speak. So that's really where virtual reality we're seeing has a place within simulation. A lot of times we find that customers cannot always create a situation where the learner can exist within the scope of their practice as well.

So one of the products we have to explain that is it's called VR clinicals, and it's designed to allow a learner to prioritize care and delegate, and they can't often do that, say, in a pre-licensure program in their clinical experience. Uh, so this allows them to put the VR headset on. They're taking care of anywhere from 2 to 4 patients that they've already done clinical preparation on prior to getting into the headset so that all their notes all follow them into the headset.

And there's a lot of different interactions and distractions built into that world, so to speak, where they need to delegate care based on [00:19:00] whatever their clinical assessment is based on the demands of the patient. Um, they can give medications in that space. It's a full nurses, uh, full unit with a nurse's station and resources that way.

So. It's really interesting how it's starting to transfer into that space. And VR really gives opportunities to programs that have large enrollments, but don't have the resources to be able to give them hands on simulation every day.

Susan Cort: What a great way to build up that confidence and that competence in these high-stake environments.

Luke Kempski: Yeah, they can kind of, they can progress from the VR to the simulation lab to then real patients.

Joe Corvino: Exactly. It's a way to scaffold that learning. So from didactic in the classroom to your point loop through the skills lab into VR and then into clinical practice.

Susan Cort: What about the AI, Joe? How are you using that at Laerdal?

Joe Corvino: There are two ways fundamentally that we're focusing on AI at Laerdal. And one of those ways is to bring [00:20:00] more realistic and high-fidelity interactions with our patients. So conversational AI is one area where we're starting to integrate in VR clinical specifically. So within the headset, the learner will be able to ask the patient a question, and that patient will respond without an interaction from a moderator or facilitator, as well as beginning to experiment with building that into our real life simulators as well.

So you can ask that a question and you'll get an answer. So some pretty amazing stuff there. Um, and we're also working on integrating AI into our SimCapture platform. In that respect, it's to help the simulationists or the people who are focusing on the operational side of simulation be more effective and efficient.

So by embedding AI into that system, uh, we're looking to help them increase their throughput of learners within their simulation center, uh, create AI driven evaluations. Um, and do things that allow them to just get more people through that learning experience with the, without being bogged down with [00:21:00] some of the operational aspects of simulation.

Luke Kempski: Great. And Joe, you've been involved with simulations for so long. I would imagine every time you see different industries and things like that, you think about how you could create simulations around that. Uh, can you talk a little bit about beyond healthcare where you think simulations have really good applications?

Joe Corvino: For me, it really comes down to, uh, the learning outcomes. And I view simulation as a tool. Uh, anyone who I believe anyone who's creating, um, learning opportunities and, uh, developmental opportunities for staff, you're constantly looking for different tools, but you have to go through your needs analysis.

And really understand what the need is. So for me, simulation really exists as a means to an end and whether it's looking at level of competency, no matter what industry you're in and embedding somebody in that learning opportunity to get them from one point of competence to another. Or it's to test a systematic process or look at things in that way.

So [00:22:00] I, that's really where I feel like simulation, there's really no bounds to it and it can be used across the board. Of course, it was born out of aviation. At least that's how we interpret it, uh, at Laerdal and it's morphed into healthcare and at a recent, uh, international conference, there were more than 4, 000 attendees.

So the industry is just growing. And with that, I think there's application across the board. So for me at the, at the end of the day, it's fundamentally driven by your learning objectives and educational outcomes and simulation is a tool to help you get there.

Luke Kempski: Exactly. And any kind of situation where it's much more safe to practice in a virtual world or simulated world versus practicing and learning in real scenarios that might have a whole lot more risk involved.

Joe Corvino: Absolutely.

Susan Cort: It sounds like Joe, the possibilities are endless. So I wish you lots of luck in the future. We look forward to keeping up with you and. Laerdal Medical to see where you take simulations next.

Joe Corvino: Good stuff. Awesome. Thanks for having me. [00:23:00]

Susan Cort: If you have an idea for a topic or a guest, please reach out to us at PoweredbyLearning@dvinci.com . And don't forget, you can subscribe to Powered by Learning wherever you listen to your podcasts.