Reimagining Healthcare Simulation Training: An equitable model of medical realism

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Transformative Training and Instructional Interventions for Equity (Table 6)

Abstract

This paper examines standardized patient (SP) simulation as a contested epistemic space shaped by institutional priorities, cultural assumptions, and informal acts of resistance. Drawing on 28 interviews with SP educators and over a decade of ethnographic research, it critically examines how the dominant model of “medical realism”—framed through fidelity, standardization, and objectivity—limits inclusive, health equity-oriented simulation pedagogy. Through everyday small-scale interventions, SP educators enact what Stetsenko (2008) calls a “transformative activist stance,” challenging reductive portrayals and reimagining simulation as a site of epistemic plurality and social justice. This paper contributes to critical health professions education research by proposing an alternative framework for understanding simulation fidelity and medical realism in medical training.

Author

• Ivana Guarrasi, Minnesota State University - Mankato