KIDSIM-ASPIRE Simulation Research Program, Alberta Children's Hospital, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Med Educ. 2018 Feb;52(2):150-160. doi: 10.1111/medu.13411. Epub 2017 Sep 26.
Simulation-based medical education (SBME) is now ubiquitous at all levels of medical training. Given the substantial resources needed for SBME, economic evaluation of simulation-based programmes or curricula is required to demonstrate whether improvement in trainee performance (knowledge, skills and attitudes) and health outcomes justifies the cost of investment. Current literature evaluating SBME fails to provide consistent and interpretable information on the relative costs and benefits of alternatives.
Economic evaluation is widely applied in health care, but is relatively scarce in medical education. Therefore, in this paper, using a focus on SBME, we define economic evaluation, describe the key components, and discuss the challenges associated with conducting an economic evaluation of medical education interventions. As a way forward to the rigorous and state of the art application of economic evaluation in medical education, we outline the steps to gather the necessary information to conduct an economic evaluation of simulation-based education programmes and curricula, and describe the main approaches to conducting an economic evaluation.
A properly conducted economic evaluation can help stakeholders (i.e., programme directors, policy makers and curriculum designers) to determine the optimal use of resources in selecting the modality or method of assessment in simulation. It also helps inform broader decision making about allocation of scarce resources within an educational programme, as well as between education and clinical care. Economic evaluation in medical education research is still in its infancy, and there is significant potential for state-of-the-art application of these methods in this area.
基于模拟的医学教育（SBME）现在在医学培训的各个层次都无处不在。鉴于 SBME 需要大量资源，因此需要对基于模拟的计划或课程进行经济评估，以证明学员绩效（知识、技能和态度）和健康结果的提高是否证明了投资成本的合理性。当前评估 SBME 的文献未能提供替代方案相对成本和收益的一致和可解释的信息。
经济评估在医疗保健中得到广泛应用，但在医学教育中相对较少。因此，在本文中，我们重点关注 SBME，定义了经济评估，描述了关键组成部分，并讨论了对医学教育干预措施进行经济评估所面临的挑战。作为在医学教育中严格应用经济评估的一种方法，我们概述了收集进行基于模拟的教育计划和课程经济评估所需信息的步骤，并描述了进行经济评估的主要方法。
正确进行的经济评估可以帮助利益相关者（即计划主管、政策制定者和课程设计者）确定在选择模拟评估模式或方法时如何优化资源利用。它还有助于告知更广泛的决策，即在教育计划内以及在教育和临床护理之间分配稀缺资源。医学教育研究中的经济评估仍处于起步阶段，在该领域应用这些方法的最新技术具有很大的潜力。
