Reimagining Healthcare Simulation Training: Toward epistemic justice, inclusive-standard setting, and 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

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 35 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 a new framework for understanding simulation fidelity, medical realism, inclusive standard-setting practices, and health equity-oriented medical training.

Author

• Ivana Guarrasi, Minnesota State University - Mankato