Choosing Wisely for Simulation-Based Learning in Health Professions Education

In health professions education contexts, simulation is often used as an educational technique that replicates scenarios from practice, allowing learners to engage with and learn about both the practice context and specific tasks that they need to learn or refine. Simulation has been widely used in health professions education to balance the need to successfully train students in clinical skills competencies while optimizing patient safety. Simulation-based learning has many benefits including standardized clinical scenarios, decreased reliance on vulnerable patients, facilitated feedback, and improved learner competency and decision-making skills. A growing number of academic institutions have adopted simulation-based learning into their curriculum for training future healthcare professionals. However, advancing the adoption and cost management of simulation-based education requires an evidence-based approach that aligns learning objectives with simulation designs. Guided by the open-access Choosing Wisely framework and campaign starter kit, this diverse author group identified common high- and low-value applications of simulation-based education design. In this paper, we outline our methodology and offer 10 statements in the form of Choosing Wisely style recommendations, representing a synthesis of empirical work and our collective experience.