Translational simulation

The Western Health Simulation Program empowers our teams to deliver the best care to patients in Melbourne's west.

Translational simulation is a tool that every Western Health employee can access to improve the way we care for our community.  

Coined by Professor Victoria Brazil from Bond University, it aims to directly improve patient care and healthcare systems, through diagnosing safety and performance issues and delivering simulation-based interventions. 

The Western Health Simulation Program employs translational simulation to support our clinical and non-clinical teams. 

Key focus areas 

• Systems testing
• Quality improvement
• High-performance multidisciplinary team training
• Testing and design of new spaces, processes, protocols and new equipment
• Supporting education teams.

Translational simulation can occur anywhere in the health system and often includes using in-situ simulation where simulated scenarios are conducted in the actual clinical environment involving the multi-disciplinary teams who work there. 

Translational simulation can also occur in designated training spaces, including the Western Health Simulation Centre, a purpose-built education and learning space at Sunshine Hospital.

At Western Health we have a Simulation Community of Practice with more than 50 members committed to expanding translational simulation across our health service. 

By working together, translational simulation can be used by nurses, midwives, doctors, allied health professionals and the administrative and support staff to prepare for scenarios they may encounter in both clinical and non-clinical settings. 

It is a valuable tool for diagnosing safety and performance issues and devising simulation-based interventions.

Examples of translational simulation projects at Western Health include: 

• multidisciplinary response team training
• electronic Medical Records (EMR) implementation
• accreditation readiness
• implementation of new code response systems.

"We often train in silos in healthcare, but the real magic happens when we understand each other's roles across the whole organisation in a variety of situations and how we work together as a team to achieve our goals. "

“When it comes to errors, they often do not result from a lack of knowledge, but from system deficiencies, or communication breakdowns and siloed approaches to working.” 

Learn more about our mission of integrating simulation to improve our service delivery and patient care.

If you have an enquiry or if you’d like to know more about the Simulation Program, please contact Dr Sadka at Nancy.Sadka@wh.org.au.