I had an early start this morning. Another day at the simulation training centre - SAFER. I had to be there for 8am and it was a 45 minute walk so after grabbing some breakfast from the hotel, I headed off at 7am. It was pitch black out and would be until 9.30ish but it was a lovely walk all the same. I walked through a gorgeous housing estate with all typical Norwegian homes. People were just starting to wake for their working days as I walked past. I could see families sat around having breakfast. Many of the houses had fairy lights hanging outside which looked really pretty when walking through the streets. I really enjoyed exploring the city.

I arrived at SAFER with 10 minutes to spare. I was put into a group and the day started with a PowerPoint presentation on TALK led by a midwife called Kristina who recently joined us at Cardiff for a month of experience. Kristina went through the TALK presentation, showed a role play video of two midwives in practice and then asked the group of 50 or so midwives and obstetricians to perform a debrief using the TALK tool. I found that really helpful as that was the first TALK debrief I was actively involved with.

After a short break, we headed to our simulation stations. It was the same lay out as the previous week. I started off in NLS, then PPH and finally Eclampsia. The biggest thing I found interesting this time was that in Cardiff, we tend to focus more on using alga rhythms for each obstetric emergency. I was told by one of the facilitators that they do have these available but they didn’t tend to use them until they got stuck. I quite like that we use them as I find the alga rhythm gives structure and format to the emergency, especially when tensions are running high in those sorts of situations.

I feel that their advanced simulation equipment used for training is massively useful for effective learning. I also reiterate my previous observation from last week in that they place a lot of emphasis on time given for a brief and debrief for each scenario. The debrief discussion is up to 30 minutes long which I think is when most learning takes place. This is something to perhaps consider for our PROMPT training days, depending on time allowance and content needing to be included.

I walked back to the hospital hotel in the soaking rain - I was drench! I had a nightmare with the bus service over the weekend... let’s just say a 10 minute bus journey took me an hour and 30 minutes, so I won’t be using that again in a hurry. A chilled evening and an early nights sleep as I was doing an early shift tomorrow on the maternity unit!