Several years ago now…
The aeronautics sector, where simulation-based training was first developed, didn’t take long to combine control familiarisation capacities with flight simulation procedures in order to select candidates on the basis of their spatial abilities. Simulators are not only used extensively in basic training programmes, but also in retraining courses specific to each aircraft. Simulation-based courses form an integral part of a pilot’s career and are included in the regular retraining sessions required by the regulations in force.
Although aeronautics is the field most often cited when the subject of simulation-based training is broached, it’s worth pointing out that the maritime and nuclear sectors also pursue the same interests:
• safety, in a society that no longer tolerates accidents, and
• economy. It’s less expensive to train pilots on simulators than on actual training flights.

Following the lead…
The issues involved in healthcare are very much the same: avoiding accidents, rationalising costs, and securing and improving patients’ care pathways, all of which are covered by the French National Authority for Health’s ethics motto “Never the first time on a patient”.
At Lorraine Virtual Hospital, simulation-based training in healthcare is no longer an innovation; it’s an integral part of initial and in-service training courses alike. Our platforms for simulating scenarios in sophisticated technological environments are ideally structured to participate fully in delivery of all our training programmes.
Experimenting in order to practice better is what simulation in healthcare is all about, where the right to make mistakes and reappraisals would seem necessary. The wide variety of situations covered fosters acquisition of skills. Simulated scenarios teach health professionals fundamental procedures and reflexes.

These days, going further in simulation and focusing on interdisciplinarity are essential.
First of all, simulation-based training makes use of equipment (procedural simulators and manikins), standardised patients and virtual reality in order to reproduce care situations and environments with a view to teaching diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, and repeat processes, medical concepts and decision-making by professionals and teams of professionals.
These days, at Lorraine Virtual Hospital, we also focus on health professionals’ behaviour, validation of their competences or their recertification, which will form part of their careers in the near future.
From one simulated scenario to another, and from one interdisciplinary scenario to the next, it has become undeniable that human factors, connected with activities carried out in teams, must now be taken into full account in simulation-based training. And, once again, it’s in the light of aeronautical training that we in the healthcare sector deliver training on teamwork, preparation, anticipation, information sharing, work organisation, supervision, leadership, communication and even semantics. Interdisciplinarity must be our guide.
Even if the motto that underlies all our programmes, “Never the first time on a patient”, is well ingrained in our minds, there’s more to be said.
It’s not enough to train on simulators recreating realistic microworlds, or by endless repetitions of procedural scenarios and actions.
Just as a pilot can’t learn to fly without actually flying, for health professionals, over and above a simulated world, our training programmes are only meaningful when applied and tested out in a real world.

The opportunity of Lorraine Virtual Hospital of: a university and medical environment.
Located on the Brabois Health Campus, alongside the Faculty of Medicine, Midwifery and Health Professions, Nancy Regional University Hospital Centre and Lorraine Institute of Cancerology, Lorraine Virtual Hospital (HVL) has all the qualified resources on hand required for teaching through simulation. Another advantage of this highly privileged environment: University Diploma courses for medical and paramedical health professionals wishing to teach via simulation are delivered on the campus, so enabling HVL to train its own trainers there.
You don’t become a trainer in simulation just like that, and the members of Lorraine Virtual Hospital’s Academic Council, all of them academics, health professionals or cadres, ensure that rules are fully complied with. Simulation-based training must be linked with cooperation between universities, healthcare facilities and training institutes. Lorraine Virtual Hospital is in contact with them on a daily basis – cooperation is pleasantly natural within its walls.