Elizabeth Blodgett Horsley ʼ93
Faculty of Health Sciences
Expert in healthcare simulation became part of pandemic response at ground zero in NYC
In 2017, Elizabeth Blodgett Horsley was recruited to a New York City hospital to implement a clinical simulation program to help teach and keep staff updated and prepared. She thought she’d be there for a year. Then it turned into a couple more. Even though she lives on the Niagara Escarpment, it wasn’t a big deal to fly back and forth to Brooklyn.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and she found herself at ground zero in the United States.
Everything changed.
Elizabeth graduated with an Arts degree from Queens University and then enrolled in the Bachelor of Nursing program at McMaster in 1989. When she crossed the stage in 1993, it was at a time when jobs for new nurses in Canada were scarce, so she – and many other nursing grads – travelled to Florida to begin her career in the operating room. She eventually found her way back to Hamilton Health Sciences (and married a Mac commerce grad, Craig Horsley), then transitioned to nursing education in 2003. In 2005 she was the lead in overseeing a half-million dollar grant from the province of Ontario to develop and implement a clinical simulation program in an undergraduate nursing program.
It was in 2014 that she decided to take the training necessary to become an expert in healthcare simulation education. She was part of the first graduating class from the Master of Science in Medical and Healthcare Simulation at Drexel University in Philadelphia and says it opened her eyes to the real impact that simulation can make.
It was through connections made in the program that she was recruited by the new chief of medicine for the Brooklyn Hospital Centre in 2017. As Director of Simulation, Elizabeth became charged with transforming a forgotten simulation lab and random pieces of equipment into a robust and thriving space in the community hospital. Her role runs the gamut – from implementing deliberate practice modules for residents and medical students, to incorporating simulation in staff education to enhance the patient experience, to developing simulation activities for nursing education. “Simulation has become one of the standards in health profession teaching and learning,” she says. “It’s how this generation is learning and it’s making a big difference in patient care.”
In March 2020, everything changed when New York City became the epicentre of the outbreak in the United States. Brooklyn Hospital Centre, just across the Brooklyn Bridge from lower Manhattan, was one of the hardest-hit hospitals in the city and the country.
Elizabeth was redeployed to help manage the crisis, becoming part of a team operating a command centre for the entire hospital, which utilized one central number to call if a unit had an issue or need. “We set up one central phone line that every department called into, whether they needed housekeeping, more PPE, more resources or a patient moved.”
Elizabeth stayed in Brooklyn from early March until the end of November 2020 without seeing her family. “How could I leave? I was part of the team doing urgent work. It was a highly stressful time but I was proud to be able to assist.”
After the crisis subsided, Elizabeth went back to building on her simulation success. She became a member of the writing teams for two of the Healthcare Simulation Standards of Best Practice - Prebriefing and Simulation Design. She is a Certified Healthcare Simulation Educator and facilitates readiness review courses for the certification. “I’ve spent a lot of time looking at education theory and best practices for implementing and facilitating simulation. Just because you have hi-tech equipment does not necessarily mean you are doing high quality simulation education. Learners can practice before doing procedures on patients and it makes for a much safer patient experience. It’s better for the retention of knowledge as well. There’s now even an entire body of literature around how simulation can be used for EDI. There are so many ways to use simulation for better outcomes.”
Elizabeth says simulation is a natural fit with the problem-based learning model she was introduced to when studying at McMaster. “I love working in a collaborative and sharing community. Simulation educators are an amazing group. It’s wonderful to be a part of it and to support others in this field.”