One Million Lives - A Laerdal Podcast

Join us as Dr. Zoran Bahtijarević, Chief Medical Officer for the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), tells us about a remarkable effort that brought CPR training to 200,000 sports fans during UEFA Euro 2024. Inspired by high-profile cardiac cases like the on-field cardiac arrest experienced by Manchester United’s famed Christian Eriksen, UEFA partnered with the European Resuscitation C...

An International Women’s Day Special—Join us as we speak with Trude Thommessen, an Academic Development Midwife and Clinical supervisor at Stavanger University Hospital, about her incredible work training midwives in Afghanistan. She shares insights into the critical shortage of midwives there, the challenges of education and training in a conservative society, and how simulation-based learning ha...

Every second counts in a stroke emergency. Are we doing enough to train healthcare teams for rapid response?  Dr. Ivette Motola takes us inside the Advanced Stroke Life Support (ASLS®) Blended Learning Course, a transformative program teaching professionals how to detect strokes fast and act decisively. From advanced treatments to the power of simulation, she shares how education is saving lives—a...

In this episode, Dr. David Fredman, an expert in resuscitation systems, shares the remarkable impact of Sweden’s Heartrunner Program—a life-saving network that alerts CPR-trained volunteers via a smartphone app when someone nearby suffers cardiac arrest. With public AED use increasing survival rates to 70%, could this be the future of emergency response worldwide?   Joining him is Anna, a voluntee...

Join our conversation with two, esteemed educators from the UK’s London Ambulance Service, Stephen Davison and Tom Cutting. Davison serves as a Paramedic and Blended Digital Learning Lead and Cutting as a Digital Coordinator and, together, they share a behind the scenes look at training and education within one of the world’s largest pre-hospital care providers. Dive into the unique challenges tha...

Join us as Dr. Pierre Barker, recognized expert in healthcare quality, provides vital insights into the current landscape of patient safety as seen through his own personal narrative. In 1999, The US Institute of Medicine report “To Err is Human” revealed sobering data on the loss of life in the US due to medical error. This ignited a call for systematic change and prioritization of patient safety...

Two renowned leaders in healthcare education joined us at this year’s International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH). They are Dr. Janice Palaganas and Dr. David Rodgers. Listen as we hear their perspectives on two trending topics. Dr. Palaganas shared what it will take to further advance clinical simulation as teaching method. Dr. Rodgers spoke on the use of artificial intelligence (AI)...

Join us as Dr. Nalini Singhal shares highlights of her lifelong journey in revolutionizing neonatal care. A renowned neonatologist and co-developer of the Helping Babies Survive programs, Dr. Singhal's work has trained over a million healthcare professionals worldwide. In this episode, Dr. Singhal discusses topics relevant to all of us in simulation like peer-to-peer learning, clinical outcom...

This year's annual European Resuscitation Council conference brought a new and potentially very impactful collaboration: The ERC and the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations). Football, or Soccer, is the world's largest sport, both in terms of active players and spectators. In this special episode from the ERC conference, you will hear more about this unique opportunity for lay...

Hear Dr. Barry Isenberg, President-elect of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH), share how the next stage in the growing importance of patient simulation will be about equating the benefits of simulation to bona fide clinical results.   Dr. Isenberg is Director of the Gordon Center for Simulation and Innovation in Medical Education at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. I...

Across healthcare, assessing competency has become a major concern. And it is an awesome responsibility. Schools of nursing and schools of medicine want to ensure that their graduates are prepared to care for patients. Hospitals and other institutions want to grow and develop their staff to become even better care providers. Relying on competency as a sole measure of readiness, however, creates a...

A “learning organization” is characterized by the value it places on curiosity. Learning organizations pursue an abundance mindset looking at problems as opportunities. In this way their curiosity fosters experimentation, vision, a commitment to mission and even a natural sense of optimism and self-confidence. Other types of organizations may adopt a scarcity mindset, emphasizing command and contr...

Competency is at the forefront of everyone’s mind in healthcare. There is barely a hospital, school of nursing, or school of medicine that is not concerned with whether their practitioners and/or soon-to-be graduates are suitably competent to deliver safe patient care. But is competency enough to assess a practitioner’s or a learner’s true readiness to fulfill their appointed role? The answer lies...

If you attended this year’s meeting, the Society in Europe for Simulation Applied to Medicine (SESAM), you know that this year’s conference focused on some pivotal shifts in how key experts are looking at patient simulation. If you didn’t attend, you should know what some of those experts said. Not only was this year’s SESAM conference one of the best attended, but it was also notably optimistic a...

If you are leading patient simulation efforts in hospitals, are you pursuing an education paradigm or are you pursuing what hospitals seek—a performance improvement paradigm? Education speaks a uniquely different “language” from the world of hospitals. Education focuses on imparting the knowledge and skills necessary for a nurse, doctor, or other healthcare worker to demonstrate a foundational lev...

For those in Hospitals who led simulation-based training, the COVID pandemic posed a continually changing array of training priorities. Those priorities began with donning and doffing PPE but quickly evolved to managing patients in isolation, difficult airway management, respiratory therapy, and the need to deliver emergency interventions across departments that were not prepared for the new pace...

An estimated 295,000 women worldwide die annually due to childbirth. And there are concerning trends in areas like the United States where maternal mortality rates are on the rise. Care under the supervision of a midwife has often been associated with better outcomes, and so the question becomes why. Hear Sally Pairman, MD, Chief Executive for the International Confederation of Midwives, share how...

The Helsinki Stroke Model confirmed that stroke patient outcomes can be improved through rapid diagnosis, treatment, and efficient transfer of patients to stroke specialists. Lives have been saved through this model and a resulting sense of esprit in the stroke care community often called the “minute spirit”.  Hear Martin Kurz, MD, a Neurologist at Stavanger University Hospital and President of th...

Healthcare institutions are now using simulation to improve systemwide performance. Learn from Victoria Brazil, MD, an emergency physician and educator at Gold Coast Health Service, Australia, how simulation can foster system-wide improvement gains which can improve patient safety and care efficiency. 

The Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE) is a standard for assessing student performance in healthcare, but some have questioned its relevance. Listen to Ronald M. Harden, MD, OBE, often called “father of the OSCE,” as he addresses the questions and discusses the relevance of the OSCE today. 

Simulation-based training works. But what fundamentals in simulation make simulation effective. In this podcast, Ross Scalese, MD, a Professor of Medicine and Director at the Gordon Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, shares what makes patient simulation a success.

Immediate Kangaroo Mother Care is a lifeline for newborns, especially for ill or premature babies. Yet it is often omitted in newborn protocol. Listen to Siren Rettedal, MD, a neonatologist Stavanger University Hospital, talk about how Kangaroo Mother Care saves lives and in one study it reduced mortality rates by 25%. 

Finding the time to conduct clinical simulation in a hospital setting is a universal challenge. Listen to May Sissel Vadla, MD, a PhD fellow at the University of Stavanger, Norway, share how she helped take a birthing unit at a little-known hospital from 700 to 8,500 simulations annually while improving patient outcomes.