Three locations of technology enhanced medical simulation training and their effect on learning and knowing

This qualitative study aims to address the identified gap in literature concerning  the lack of rigorous, theory-based, qualitative studies to clarify how and when to effectively use simulations to train health care professionals (Cook, et al, 2011). By drawing upon actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005) an approach that situates materiality as a part of the social practices, and provides theoretical tools for observation and discussion of the relation between the material assemblages and human actors, we have investigated how learning takes place during a simulation-based medical training. Knowing and learning, according to ANT, are not simply cognitive or social phenomena, but are seen as emerging as effects of the socio-material networks gathered together and being performed into being in particular locations (Law, 2004; Rimpiläinen, 2011).  In this study we have focussed on observing the socio-material arrangements that emerged in three locations involved in the simulation – the simulation room, the observation room and the reflection room - and analysing what kinds of knowing and learning they have produced through which socio-material arrangements. Data for analysis consists of observations of full-scale simulations of acute trauma handling in the emergency room with ten groups of medical and nursing students.  Preliminary findings indicate that the different locations and material arrangements of the simulation cycle produce different kinds of knowing and learning from the intended curriculum objectives. The findings can contribute to the theoretical knowledge of how to design simulation-based medical education.