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Welcome to The Sim Cafe, a podcast produced by the team at Innovative Simsolutions, edited by Shelly Houser.
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Join our host Deb Tauber, as she sits down with subject matter experts from across the globe to reimagine clinical education and the use of simulation.
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So pour yourself a cup of relaxation, sit back, tune in and learn something new from The Sim Cafe.
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Welcome to another episode of The Sim Cafe.
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Today.
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We are blessed to have Jennifer McCarthy.
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Jennifer, thank you for joining us.
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Why don't you tell our guests a little bit about yourself?
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Thank you so much.
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It's always an honor to spend time with you and catch up and to have this time put aside to talk about simulation is wonderful.
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Um, my back round, I come from Jersey.
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If you can't tell by my accent, wherever you're listening from, that's not on the East Coast.
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And I, my background is clinically as a paramedic for over 30 years and in New Jersey we're hospital based employees as paramedics.
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So I've always had the gift of working in professionally, um, a good friend to the nursing community for a long time.
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And I've also been in higher education for 20 years, leading two paramedic programs, and then having the wonderful opportunity right now to work in higher education for graduate health science programs.
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And in addition to that, I am the president of 579 Solution, which is a company focused on enhancing patient safety, patient experience and clinician safety.
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So thank you so much for inviting me and I look forward to our time today.
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Thank you, Jennifer, Jennifer and I go back, we run the council together and have done a lot of work with the society for simulation and health care.
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And I've always really appreciated Jennifer.
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I honestly thought you were a nurse at first.
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I get that a lot.
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I always say my, my close friends of being close friends with nursing as a profession has always been near and dear that I'm speaking a in healthcare delivery.
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I remember when I was much younger, uh, and an experience that formalization cuz EMS is such a younger field in maturation.
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I had amazing nursing mentors and always revered those relationships.
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So a lot of people always ask me about, are you a nurse?
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And then you get very strange responses when they find out I'm one of those in the back of the ambulance.
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And I always take that as just an opportunity for those that say, oh, you're an EMS.
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Then I take the opportunity to show them what that really can be about.
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And those that say, oh, that's cool.
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I say, yeah, what you do is cool too.
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So, uh, try to find the cross section either way.
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Perfect.
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Perfect.
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So why don't you tell us about how you got into simulation?
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Oh, funny.
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I always say it's a funny story, not for the faculty member, Jeff, who was my asthmatic patient that, uh, when I first started in higher education, it was a timeframe where the curriculum paramedic education modified and there needed to be an expansion on psychomotor competency assessment.
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It was in, uh, the late nineties, 2000.
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And so we utilized historically faculty members and students to role play, have air bunnies in the air around that, because now we know that those are standardized participants in a, in a practice of healthcare simulation at the time I thought it was role playing.
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And Jeff was one of my faculty team members.
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And my staffing at that time was somebody was the patient and somebody was actually the faculty assessor and Jeff was breathing 40 something times a minute to have an asthma attack with his inhaler in the, you know, scene to be this tip off that this is an asthmatic patient.
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And I said, there has to be a better, safer way.
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Uh, when I looked in and I said, he's gonna pass out if he continues this and our lab days at that point were eight hours, if you can imagine.
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So I called Linda Brody, my dear, uh, I always revere Linda, old time Lardal who, she worked for heart code all these years later, but, and I said, Linda, what do you have as a solution?
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And the rest is history.
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I shot for the moon and it landed in the stars.
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As I say, asked for multiple mannequins was sent for faculty development.
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And I, you know, I think success a lot of times is right place, right time.
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And I was a lucky one that was in the right place at the right time in this evolving field where I was nurtured, but then also was able to practice early in, in that simulation modality and learned quickly what worked well and then wrote down what those strategies were and held them tight, like a suitcase going overseas, you know, needing your change and meeting people like yourself in t he society.
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Clearly also, u h, had me evolve over the last, u h, two decades in this modality and really revere it, but also learn more a bout i t.
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So
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Now, Jennifer, do you have a simulation story that you would consider your favorite or the most impactful?
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So it's so fascinating because, um, as, as prep for the podcast, I was thinking, you know, a simulation story.
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Wow.
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I would, what I would like to summarize for listeners and, uh, people interested within simulation is the stories or the impact, the aha moments that happen within SIM.
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And for me, it's all about the professional skills and it is the sweet spot of cross pollination.
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When a student who is learning a profession or, and actively working, hypothetically some of you know, the work on 579 Solutions is in health systems, helping new grads.
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And how does a new grad actually integrate into healthcare delivery safely for themselves, but also patients and the aha moments where they can in that sweet spot of patient engagement and enhanced patient communication that they actually receive more by being the best version of themselves and their care has a healing holistic aspect to it.
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That for me, by far, I can give a recent example in the PA program that I'm working with, where a student has the vice as I call it SW so tight of sticking to the rubric of the, you know, HPI assessment, that history and physical assessment that he has to do that he's so robotic, he's not himself.
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And the same exact thing can, can hold true with a new grad.
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Who's trying to stick to that checklist.
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And yet the SIM can serve as this platform to opening up a portal where clinicians really are aspiring.
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Clinicians can learn when I'm myself, I actually can help patient heal better because I actually know the impact of whatever it is for them.
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What are the factors that are actually going into this problem?
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Yes, it is chest pain, but why is that chest pain there?
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And that connection helps the patient on such a deeper level.
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That to me is so inspirational that to me, that seeing that moment, um, I can't put a price on because I know it has so many other patients in the future that are going to benefit from that single moment.
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So that that's my moment of SIM.
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I would call it my zen of SIM, where I really go home at the end of the day.
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And I say, all right, that was a today.
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That was a great win.
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So what I think I'm hearing you say is when they bring their authentic self into the simulation and realize that that's who they can be when they're at the bedside or at the cart, it's this, right?
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Yeah.
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If you're, if you're in the 12 by 12 box outside, it could be on, you know, a, a highway or yes, if you're at the bedside, it's all the same recipe, which is fascinating to think about it doesn't really matter.
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And I think for me, what I've learned is, you know, starting out as the EMS educator and then the EMS simulationist and then crossing over into health professions and then having this blessing through the company of helping nursing, uh, it doesn't matter the letters after your name, it's all the same fundamental from the simulation is perspective.
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The facilitation is the facilitation when you're living by the best practice and the people that are there are coming to this environment that they're stepping into this best practice area, where it's safe to error and safe to transform.
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And I always refer to my favorite vulnerability, uh, guru, Brene brown who says vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.
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And I know this, that anybody thinking about the greatest clinician that they know, they have two things, amazing clinical skills, but also human connection.
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And it's the ying and the yang of those two that allow them to be innovative, creative, and change under pressure.
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And we need that in healthcare.
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We need that to literally bring us forward for the struggles that we have in this especially us model for, for my, uh, my global friend listening, you may be a little further ahead of us and our hat goes off to you on some of that.
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Yep.
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Yep.
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Great.
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Those are some great thoughts, Jennifer.
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Thank you so much.
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Um, my next question is where do you see the future of simulation?
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Most people, uh, look to technology and the advancement of technology.
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And I would like to inspire our profession to really clean up our house and really take note and pause to where are the areas of improvement where we are now, so that the technology integration can have a deeper and more meaningful packed.
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Whether we're talking about VR, whether we're talking about green, you know, green room where it doesn't even look like anything for me, it's, it's really the future.
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The immediate future is about us cleaning up our house.
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And when I say that, it is about taking note and taking in on where is the improvement doing a real quality improvement assessment for all the programs out there that are accredited.
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Uh, my hat goes off to you and I clap tremendously.
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Those that aren't, you can still use the standards to drive improvement practice.
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Um, when I think of technology that, you know, I have like the Intel speed, you know, going through like on a commercial and it's always moving so fast that mirrors our rushed culture of healthcare delivery.
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We're always rushing, right?
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Why are we rushing cuz that's how we were educated yet.
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I think the immediate future really requires us to take pause and note, where can we improve the infrastructure and delivery?
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So what we are delivering matter on a deeper level so that when this technology intersects, it will, uh, have deeper meaning.
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That's what I hope that's, that's my hope because I think if we just allow the technology to drive the conversation, we may find ourselves short, changed, short circuited, whatever, you know, analogy we wanna use and say, we have to go back and do some cleanup.
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I think we've, we've done really well with COVID influences and expanding to telehealth and virtual SIM environments.
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Again, I think that has strengthened our face to face delivery because we've become, we, we slowed down a little bit, right?
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To really reevaluate what assessments matter, what competency questions did we have to keep in.
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And that was a gift to us.
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And I think the future holds us taking inventory in that same level.
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At least I hope it does.
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So I think what I'm hearing you say is some mind full into our, what are we doing and why are we doing this?
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Yeah.
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We're not just doing this because this is the way we've always done it.
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Let's go ahead and look at it.
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Do we need to do it this way?
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Or can we change?
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And, and Jennifer, you were in New York at the time that the pandemic was absolutely crushing.
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Yeah.
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The United States, the world.
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And I, I believe didn't, you guys have to give up your simulation center for real patients and stuff like that.
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All of our equipment was actually taken from Seaton Hall University and brought over to Hackensack Meridian Health so that they could turn a cafeteria into a COVID ICU.
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So yes, it was is a timeframe.
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Um, I had two simulations on March.
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I believe it was 13, 2 020.
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We did the morning and then security came through and said, everybody needs to leave.
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And evacuate immediately.
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People were packing up their second screen from their desk.
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And u h, in a manner that I have to tell you was, u h, beyond surreal went home and the clinical educators were calling me my personal clients through 579.
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What are we gonna do?
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How can I prep this workforce?
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The conversations in higher ed was, how do we keep, how do we keep these students engaged in curricula t hat can't go into the clinical environments and that went on for months and months.
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So we had to become creative.
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U m, we had added layers o f, I don't wanna call it politics, but it was a protection of FERPA.
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I wasn't allowed to use zoom.
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So most of the solutions were out on zoom.
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And I was, you know, sitting in brainstorming sessions with other simulation educators and, a nd leaders.
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And my institution said, it's not FERPA compliant.
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We won't do it.
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You have to figure out how to do it in teams and teams at that point.
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I mean, there's people probably saying, I have an upset stomach now in teams, welcome to my agita in 2 020, it was literally a collaboration platform for, you know, teams that w ork together, not recording and processing S IM, but we did it, you know, in f our short weeks.
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U m, I mean we would wake up and, and my team and I would get on and we would SIM the SIM another great gift by the way that I hope the future of simulation can hold Sim.
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Your own SIM is an amazing thing.
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You l earned so much, I'm not talking the dry run, I'm talking Sim the entire S IM so that you literally can have the faculty that help you.
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The other educators that help you participate.
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It's almost an experiential immersion where they can see it from a learner participant perspective, but we can also gather so much data on process improvement.
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We h ave the IT team on with us just troubleshooting.
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How do we navigate all these invites?
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Looking back?
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It's pretty amazing.
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We pulled it off, but yes, it was a hectic time for sure.
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And a lot of p atients benefited from the work that collectively happened in this very condensed area, u h, a nd simulation.
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But my heart goes o ut t o a ll the families impacted by loss because there was a lot of loss in this tri-state area, obviously as well.
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Thanks for sharing it.
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Jen, what else would you like to leave our listeners with?
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Do you wanna talk a little bit about 579?
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Uh, anything that you think?
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Sure.
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Yeah.
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I always love to talk about 579 Solutions.
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You may be wondering first, how did you two use that name for company?
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I think the origin is an interesting one.
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Walter J Drivett, medic number 579 in New Jersey.
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Greatest mentor I ever had met him by happenstance being a paramedic student in the corner of the cafeteria.
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And he was teaching incident management before it was federally funded.
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The right thing to do, he was the, uh, he was a simulationist before we knew what SIM was.
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And, uh, he kind of called me out of the back corner and said, you're gonna come up here in the tabletop simulation and you're gonna lead the event.
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And I tried to, you know, pleasantly say, oh sir, no, thank you.
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I'm just the paramedic student.
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And that was the beginning of a 28 year amazing sister brother relationship where I always say he saw me what I didn't see in myself.
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He unfortunately passed away from a autoimmune disorder and at the end of his life spreading his ashes.
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And somebody mentioned that day that I had never heard this, but you die twice in your life once when you leave your physical body.
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But the second, when people stopped talking about you and that day, I was like, I'm gonna do something Walter or 5, 7, 9 something.
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And a year to that day, I found him 579 Solutions dedicating it to innovative, positive change for patient care delivery companies, whether that's education based healthcare based entities.
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And most recently really working again in healthcare systems to test policy, procedure, practice, find root cause areas for improvement, one of the most recent and it, and it's so rudimentary when I share it.
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But if you're not doing this testing work, it really cannot present itself for a growth.
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Um, during falls week, there's always initiatives in healthcare system and we did a series of falls simulation based around the evidence based root cause for patient falls.
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And what we found in the emergency department is each of the rooms didn't have the falls, all the risk items in the room, they were down the hall, make a left in the storage area.
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And if a nurse or a PCT needed to identify somebody with falls rest, the best place for it was to have it in the room.
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So that literally the Hovy alarm could be utilized.
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Non-slip socks could be put on right away.
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The yellow blanket at the end of the bed could, could be put.
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And something as simple as that change has, has actually shifted a whole philosophy and culture in the ER, that falls do happen here.
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And secondarily that falls matter.
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And we're part of the arsenal to reduce that falls impact.
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It's fascinating because again, I think it's so simple, but the simulation pointed out the simple solution.
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So while a lot of people always look for the return on investment, I say, look at that, moving some supplies has a huge turn on, uh, return on your investment that came from the, at modality that yes, there was an investment for, but you averted such a risk and are averting that risk as we move forward.
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It's fascinating to sit back and, and really think about the opportunities that can come from that type of patient safety focus and work.
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So thank you for letting me share that, cuz it, it makes me, it makes my heart sing to think about all the people that have been kept safe with one simple operational culture shift, culture change, and, uh, and that's contagious.
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That's contagious.
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So thanks
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Now, Jennifer, if our audience, if our listeners wanna get a hold of you, is there, are you on LinkedIn?
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Are you...
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I'm on LinkedIn?
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Yes.
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And Jennifer McCarthy and 579 Solutions.com.
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So it's the numeric 579 and then solutions with an S.com.
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You can contact me.
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There a re from the contact page and also read more about the projects and the clients that we've had.
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And I really appreciate the time and I hope everybody i s staying safe globally.
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And I cannot wait to be back in person and seeing all of my lovely simulation colleagues face t o f ace as we hopefully get to the new norm, whatever that may be.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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Well, thank you so much.
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It's been just wonderful interview with you and to reconnect, uh, you know, we do, we had some good times.
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We did and we will in the future.
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All right.
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Keep up the good work you're self.
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Oh, thank you.
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Thank you very much.
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And happy simulating.
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Yes.
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Thanks for joining us here at The Sim Cafe, we hope you enjoyed connect with us at www.insimsolutions.com and be sure to hit that like and subscribe button.
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So you never miss an episode of The Sim Cafe.
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Welcome to The Sim Cafe, a podcast produced by the team at Innovative Simsolutions, edited by Shelly Houser.
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Join our host Deb Tauber, as she sits down with subject matter experts from across the globe to reimagine clinical education and the use of simulation.
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So pour yourself a cup of relaxation, sit back, tune in and learn something new from The Sim Cafe.
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Welcome to another episode of The Sim Cafe.
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Today.
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We are blessed to have Jennifer McCarthy.
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Jennifer, thank you for joining us.
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Why don't you tell our guests a little bit about yourself?
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Thank you so much.
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It's always an honor to spend time with you and catch up and to have this time put aside to talk about simulation is wonderful.
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Um, my back round, I come from Jersey.
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If you can't tell by my accent, wherever you're listening from, that's not on the East Coast.
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And I, my background is clinically as a paramedic for over 30 years and in New Jersey we're hospital based employees as paramedics.
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So I've always had the gift of working in professionally, um, a good friend to the nursing community for a long time.
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And I've also been in higher education for 20 years, leading two paramedic programs, and then having the wonderful opportunity right now to work in higher education for graduate health science programs.
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And in addition to that, I am the president of 579 Solution, which is a company focused on enhancing patient safety, patient experience and clinician safety.
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So thank you so much for inviting me and I look forward to our time today.
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Thank you, Jennifer, Jennifer and I go back, we run the council together and have done a lot of work with the society for simulation and health care.
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And I've always really appreciated Jennifer.
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I honestly thought you were a nurse at first.
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I get that a lot.
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I always say my, my close friends of being close friends with nursing as a profession has always been near and dear that I'm speaking a in healthcare delivery.
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I remember when I was much younger, uh, and an experience that formalization cuz EMS is such a younger field in maturation.
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I had amazing nursing mentors and always revered those relationships.
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So a lot of people always ask me about, are you a nurse?
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And then you get very strange responses when they find out I'm one of those in the back of the ambulance.
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And I always take that as just an opportunity for those that say, oh, you're an EMS.
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Then I take the opportunity to show them what that really can be about.
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And those that say, oh, that's cool.
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I say, yeah, what you do is cool too.
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So, uh, try to find the cross section either way.
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Perfect.
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Perfect.
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So why don't you tell us about how you got into simulation?
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Oh, funny.
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I always say it's a funny story, not for the faculty member, Jeff, who was my asthmatic patient that, uh, when I first started in higher education, it was a timeframe where the curriculum paramedic education modified and there needed to be an expansion on psychomotor competency assessment.
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It was in, uh, the late nineties, 2000.
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And so we utilized historically faculty members and students to role play, have air bunnies in the air around that, because now we know that those are standardized participants in a, in a practice of healthcare simulation at the time I thought it was role playing.
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And Jeff was one of my faculty team members.
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And my staffing at that time was somebody was the patient and somebody was actually the faculty assessor and Jeff was breathing 40 something times a minute to have an asthma attack with his inhaler in the, you know, scene to be this tip off that this is an asthmatic patient.
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And I said, there has to be a better, safer way.
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Uh, when I looked in and I said, he's gonna pass out if he continues this and our lab days at that point were eight hours, if you can imagine.
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So I called Linda Brody, my dear, uh, I always revere Linda, old time Lardal who, she worked for heart code all these years later, but, and I said, Linda, what do you have as a solution?
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And the rest is history.
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I shot for the moon and it landed in the stars.
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As I say, asked for multiple mannequins was sent for faculty development.
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And I, you know, I think success a lot of times is right place, right time.
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And I was a lucky one that was in the right place at the right time in this evolving field where I was nurtured, but then also was able to practice early in, in that simulation modality and learned quickly what worked well and then wrote down what those strategies were and held them tight, like a suitcase going overseas, you know, needing your change and meeting people like yourself in t he society.
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Clearly also, u h, had me evolve over the last, u h, two decades in this modality and really revere it, but also learn more a bout i t.
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So
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Thank you.
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Thank you.
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Now, Jennifer, do you have a simulation story that you would consider your favorite or the most impactful?
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So it's so fascinating because, um, as, as prep for the podcast, I was thinking, you know, a simulation story.
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Wow.
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I would, what I would like to summarize for listeners and, uh, people interested within simulation is the stories or the impact, the aha moments that happen within SIM.
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And for me, it's all about the professional skills and it is the sweet spot of cross pollination.
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When a student who is learning a profession or, and actively working, hypothetically some of you know, the work on 579 Solutions is in health systems, helping new grads.
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And how does a new grad actually integrate into healthcare delivery safely for themselves, but also patients and the aha moments where they can in that sweet spot of patient engagement and enhanced patient communication that they actually receive more by being the best version of themselves and their care has a healing holistic aspect to it.
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That for me, by far, I can give a recent example in the PA program that I'm working with, where a student has the vice as I call it SW so tight of sticking to the rubric of the, you know, HPI assessment, that history and physical assessment that he has to do that he's so robotic, he's not himself.
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And the same exact thing can, can hold true with a new grad.
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Who's trying to stick to that checklist.
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And yet the SIM can serve as this platform to opening up a portal where clinicians really are aspiring.
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Clinicians can learn when I'm myself, I actually can help patient heal better because I actually know the impact of whatever it is for them.
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What are the factors that are actually going into this problem?
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Yes, it is chest pain, but why is that chest pain there?
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And that connection helps the patient on such a deeper level.
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That to me is so inspirational that to me, that seeing that moment, um, I can't put a price on because I know it has so many other patients in the future that are going to benefit from that single moment.
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So that that's my moment of SIM.
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I would call it my zen of SIM, where I really go home at the end of the day.
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And I say, all right, that was a today.
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That was a great win.
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So what I think I'm hearing you say is when they bring their authentic self into the simulation and realize that that's who they can be when they're at the bedside or at the cart, it's this, right?
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Yeah.
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If you're, if you're in the 12 by 12 box outside, it could be on, you know, a, a highway or yes, if you're at the bedside, it's all the same recipe, which is fascinating to think about it doesn't really matter.
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And I think for me, what I've learned is, you know, starting out as the EMS educator and then the EMS simulationist and then crossing over into health professions and then having this blessing through the company of helping nursing, uh, it doesn't matter the letters after your name, it's all the same fundamental from the simulation is perspective.
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The facilitation is the facilitation when you're living by the best practice and the people that are there are coming to this environment that they're stepping into this best practice area, where it's safe to error and safe to transform.
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And I always refer to my favorite vulnerability, uh, guru, Brene brown who says vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.
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And I know this, that anybody thinking about the greatest clinician that they know, they have two things, amazing clinical skills, but also human connection.
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And it's the ying and the yang of those two that allow them to be innovative, creative, and change under pressure.
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And we need that in healthcare.
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We need that to literally bring us forward for the struggles that we have in this especially us model for, for my, uh, my global friend listening, you may be a little further ahead of us and our hat goes off to you on some of that.
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Yep.
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Yep.
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Great.
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Those are some great thoughts, Jennifer.
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Thank you so much.
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Um, my next question is where do you see the future of simulation?
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Most people, uh, look to technology and the advancement of technology.
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And I would like to inspire our profession to really clean up our house and really take note and pause to where are the areas of improvement where we are now, so that the technology integration can have a deeper and more meaningful packed.
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Whether we're talking about VR, whether we're talking about green, you know, green room where it doesn't even look like anything for me, it's, it's really the future.
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The immediate future is about us cleaning up our house.
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And when I say that, it is about taking note and taking in on where is the improvement doing a real quality improvement assessment for all the programs out there that are accredited.
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Uh, my hat goes off to you and I clap tremendously.
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Those that aren't, you can still use the standards to drive improvement practice.
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Um, when I think of technology that, you know, I have like the Intel speed, you know, going through like on a commercial and it's always moving so fast that mirrors our rushed culture of healthcare delivery.
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We're always rushing, right?
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Why are we rushing cuz that's how we were educated yet.
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I think the immediate future really requires us to take pause and note, where can we improve the infrastructure and delivery?
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So what we are delivering matter on a deeper level so that when this technology intersects, it will, uh, have deeper meaning.
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That's what I hope that's, that's my hope because I think if we just allow the technology to drive the conversation, we may find ourselves short, changed, short circuited, whatever, you know, analogy we wanna use and say, we have to go back and do some cleanup.
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I think we've, we've done really well with COVID influences and expanding to telehealth and virtual SIM environments.
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Again, I think that has strengthened our face to face delivery because we've become, we, we slowed down a little bit, right?
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To really reevaluate what assessments matter, what competency questions did we have to keep in.
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And that was a gift to us.
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And I think the future holds us taking inventory in that same level.
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At least I hope it does.
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So I think what I'm hearing you say is some mind full into our, what are we doing and why are we doing this?
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Yeah.
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We're not just doing this because this is the way we've always done it.
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Let's go ahead and look at it.
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Do we need to do it this way?
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Or can we change?
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And, and Jennifer, you were in New York at the time that the pandemic was absolutely crushing.
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Yeah.
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The United States, the world.
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And I, I believe didn't, you guys have to give up your simulation center for real patients and stuff like that.
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All of our equipment was actually taken from Seaton Hall University and brought over to Hackensack Meridian Health so that they could turn a cafeteria into a COVID ICU.
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So yes, it was is a timeframe.
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Um, I had two simulations on March.
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I believe it was 13, 2 020.
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We did the morning and then security came through and said, everybody needs to leave.
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And evacuate immediately.
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People were packing up their second screen from their desk.
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And u h, in a manner that I have to tell you was, u h, beyond surreal went home and the clinical educators were calling me my personal clients through 579.
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What are we gonna do?
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How can I prep this workforce?
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The conversations in higher ed was, how do we keep, how do we keep these students engaged in curricula t hat can't go into the clinical environments and that went on for months and months.
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So we had to become creative.
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U m, we had added layers o f, I don't wanna call it politics, but it was a protection of FERPA.
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I wasn't allowed to use zoom.
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So most of the solutions were out on zoom.
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And I was, you know, sitting in brainstorming sessions with other simulation educators and, a nd leaders.
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And my institution said, it's not FERPA compliant.
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We won't do it.
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You have to figure out how to do it in teams and teams at that point.
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I mean, there's people probably saying, I have an upset stomach now in teams, welcome to my agita in 2 020, it was literally a collaboration platform for, you know, teams that w ork together, not recording and processing S IM, but we did it, you know, in f our short weeks.
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U m, I mean we would wake up and, and my team and I would get on and we would SIM the SIM another great gift by the way that I hope the future of simulation can hold Sim.
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Your own SIM is an amazing thing.
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You l earned so much, I'm not talking the dry run, I'm talking Sim the entire S IM so that you literally can have the faculty that help you.
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The other educators that help you participate.
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It's almost an experiential immersion where they can see it from a learner participant perspective, but we can also gather so much data on process improvement.
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We h ave the IT team on with us just troubleshooting.
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How do we navigate all these invites?
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Looking back?
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It's pretty amazing.
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We pulled it off, but yes, it was a hectic time for sure.
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And a lot of p atients benefited from the work that collectively happened in this very condensed area, u h, a nd simulation.
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But my heart goes o ut t o a ll the families impacted by loss because there was a lot of loss in this tri-state area, obviously as well.
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Thanks for sharing it.
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Jen, what else would you like to leave our listeners with?
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Do you wanna talk a little bit about 579?
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Uh, anything that you think?
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Sure.
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Yeah.
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I always love to talk about 579 Solutions.
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You may be wondering first, how did you two use that name for company?
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I think the origin is an interesting one.
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Walter J Drivett, medic number 579 in New Jersey.
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Greatest mentor I ever had met him by happenstance being a paramedic student in the corner of the cafeteria.
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And he was teaching incident management before it was federally funded.
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The right thing to do, he was the, uh, he was a simulationist before we knew what SIM was.
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And, uh, he kind of called me out of the back corner and said, you're gonna come up here in the tabletop simulation and you're gonna lead the event.
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And I tried to, you know, pleasantly say, oh sir, no, thank you.
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I'm just the paramedic student.
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And that was the beginning of a 28 year amazing sister brother relationship where I always say he saw me what I didn't see in myself.
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He unfortunately passed away from a autoimmune disorder and at the end of his life spreading his ashes.
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And somebody mentioned that day that I had never heard this, but you die twice in your life once when you leave your physical body.
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But the second, when people stopped talking about you and that day, I was like, I'm gonna do something Walter or 5, 7, 9 something.
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And a year to that day, I found him 579 Solutions dedicating it to innovative, positive change for patient care delivery companies, whether that's education based healthcare based entities.
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And most recently really working again in healthcare systems to test policy, procedure, practice, find root cause areas for improvement, one of the most recent and it, and it's so rudimentary when I share it.
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But if you're not doing this testing work, it really cannot present itself for a growth.
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Um, during falls week, there's always initiatives in healthcare system and we did a series of falls simulation based around the evidence based root cause for patient falls.
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And what we found in the emergency department is each of the rooms didn't have the falls, all the risk items in the room, they were down the hall, make a left in the storage area.
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And if a nurse or a PCT needed to identify somebody with falls rest, the best place for it was to have it in the room.
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So that literally the Hovy alarm could be utilized.
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Non-slip socks could be put on right away.
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The yellow blanket at the end of the bed could, could be put.
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And something as simple as that change has, has actually shifted a whole philosophy and culture in the ER, that falls do happen here.
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And secondarily that falls matter.
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And we're part of the arsenal to reduce that falls impact.
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It's fascinating because again, I think it's so simple, but the simulation pointed out the simple solution.
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So while a lot of people always look for the return on investment, I say, look at that, moving some supplies has a huge turn on, uh, return on your investment that came from the, at modality that yes, there was an investment for, but you averted such a risk and are averting that risk as we move forward.
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It's fascinating to sit back and, and really think about the opportunities that can come from that type of patient safety focus and work.
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So thank you for letting me share that, cuz it, it makes me, it makes my heart sing to think about all the people that have been kept safe with one simple operational culture shift, culture change, and, uh, and that's contagious.
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That's contagious.
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So thanks
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Now, Jennifer, if our audience, if our listeners wanna get a hold of you, is there, are you on LinkedIn?
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Are you...
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I'm on LinkedIn?
00:21:13.849 --> 00:21:14.069
Yes.
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And Jennifer McCarthy and 579 Solutions.com.
00:21:19.690 --> 00:21:24.309
So it's the numeric 579 and then solutions with an S.com.
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You can contact me.
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There a re from the contact page and also read more about the projects and the clients that we've had.
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And I really appreciate the time and I hope everybody i s staying safe globally.
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And I cannot wait to be back in person and seeing all of my lovely simulation colleagues face t o f ace as we hopefully get to the new norm, whatever that may be.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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Well, thank you so much.
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It's been just wonderful interview with you and to reconnect, uh, you know, we do, we had some good times.
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We did and we will in the future.
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All right.
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Keep up the good work you're self.
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Oh, thank you.
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Thank you very much.
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And happy simulating.
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Yes.
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Thanks for joining us here at The Sim Cafe, we hope you enjoyed connect with us at www.insimsolutions.com and be sure to hit that like and subscribe button.
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So you never miss an episode of The Sim Cafe.
